Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie is journalist Lisa Napoli’s captivating account of these four women, their deep and enduring friendships, and the trail they blazed to becoming icons. This was especially true in the news business, a backwater of male chauvinism where a woman might be lucky to get a foothold on the “women’s pages.” But when a pioneering nonprofit called National Public Radio came along in the 1970s, and the door to serious journalism opened a crack, four remarkable women came along and blew it off the hinges. They were incredibly important - I'm not taking anything away from our Founding Fathers - but they didn't do it alone.In the years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, women in the workplace still found themselves relegated to secretarial positions or locked out of jobs entirely. But they weren't the only people who did it. And they're all white men in white wigs with tights, and I don't think they're recognizable to a lot of Americans. There are these fabulous murals up on the walls above the Constitution, the Declaration and the Bill of Rights.

The National Archives are the closest thing we have to a cathedral of the country. On why she wanted to write a children's book about the Founding Mothers Women had no legal or political rights, and so she was trying to argue for those rights. Of course, at the time, married women could not own property of course women couldn't vote. And when they were finally mulling it, she said, 'I suppose that we will have to have a new code of laws for our new government, and when you write it, remember the ladies.'Īnd she was saying that men would be tyrants if they could. They were considering a Declaration of Independence, something that she thought they were way too timid about. History Dear John, Dear Abigail: A Love Story Through Letters

And Martha Washington would come roaring into camp in her carriage and people would cheer her into camp: 'Lady Washington is here!' And then she would sew for the soldiers and cook for the soldiers and pray with the soldiers and nurse the soldiers. And he begged her to come to camp because she was so important - she and the other officers' wives were so important for troop morale. On Martha Washington's morale-boosting roleĮvery single winter of the Revolution, she went to with. And they would cook for the soldiers and do some jobs and they got a tiny bit of pay to help out with the Army.Īnd then of course there were women who were on the battlefield doing things like watering the cannons, and then the men would get hit and they'd take over the cannon. These were generally poor women who couldn't afford to stay home, because of course there were no jobs for women. There were women who went with the soldiers as camp followers. On women's contributions during the American Revolution

Founding mothers by cokie roberts