VANGUARD How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All

Mela Lee's steadily flowing narration includes the expected variations in pitch, tone, and pace for quotations and documentation throughout this long sweep of history on Black rights from the mid-1700s through the present. Topics range from Voting Rights Amendments 15 and 19 to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and on to current events. Lee adopts a slow, stately pace that allows listeners to absorb the lengthy and sometimes disturbing events in the fight for political equity. A host of key figures includes Phyllis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, and Susan B. Anthony, Mary Bethune, Maria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Rosa Parks. Lee's unfailing performance ensures that listeners can focus on the topic and its crucial details. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2020]