Most of my books have epigraphs, a short quotation or phrase that foreshadows a theme or an incident. You will find epigraphs in some of my tables of contents, in chapters, and as paragraph breaks in the text. In The Vote: Women’s Fierce Fight, my new adult nonfiction book, there are three epigraphs at the beginning of the book and an epigraph for each of the twenty-three chapters. In light of the 2020 presidential election, here is an epigraph from the beginning of The Vote: “If we do not use the franchise we shall give our enemies a stick with which to break our heads, and we shall not be able to live down the reproach of our indifference for one hundred years,” —Mary Church Terrell, First President of the National Association of Colored Women. This image is in my book. The caption reads: The Colored American National Negro Newspaper, Feb
ruary 17, 1900, published this sketch of Mary Church Terrell after her second address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). The caption noted “Her address on ‘Woman Suffrage’ the Hit of the Recent Gathering of America’s Brainiest Women.” (Library of Congress) The image on the left
is of a landmark to Mary Church Terrell in Washington, D.C., honoring a demonstration she led in 1952 at the age of 88 to end segregation at the lunch counter of Hecht’s Department Store, formerly at this site. (Click on images to enlarge them.)
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