Voting Rights Anniversary Marked

Saturday, Lynn Sherr reminds you, is the 75th anniversary of thepassage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, the one that gaveAmerican women the right to vote in 1920.

If it hadn't been for a feisty woman named Susan B. Anthony, whoinsisted on registering to vote and then doing exactly that in 1872,despite the risk of incarceration, the vote would have been a longertime coming. After all, as history shows, those holding power havebeen reluctant to share it.

So Saturday seems the appropriate day for Sherr's hourlongspecial, "Susan B. Anthony Slept Here" (the show airs at 9 p.m. onChannel 7).

Part history lesson, part travelogue, the program visitsmemorials to Anthony and other American women who made their marks inhistory.

Its genesis is a 1994 book by Sherr and Washington-based writerJurate Kazickas, Susan B. Anthony Slept Here, a tome of nearly 600pages.

Sherr acknowledged that "Yes, I'm slightly obsessed with SusanB. Anthony. She's wonderful. She's our hero. She's the mother ofus all, to quote Gertrude Stein - the absolutely brightest star inthe 19th century firmament. Imagine going on trial for the act ofcasting a ballot."

In addition to visiting landmarks, Sherr's special is itself alandmark of sorts: She said it is the first time anyone has made atelevision program about American women who paved the way.

The idea for the television special took hold, Sherr said, aftera conversation she had with Robert Iger, then president of ABCEntertainment.

ABC supplied Sherr with a red convertible that she drives tovisit the sites where heroines lived or were honored.

Those places include Anthony's home in Rochester, N.Y., and thecourtroom in Canandaigua, N.Y., where she was tried in June, 1873; amuseum in Beaumont, Texas, honoring athlete Babe Didriksen Zaharias,and the Irvington, N.Y., home and Indianapolis offices of Madame C.J. Walker, who developed a line of cosmetics for black women andbecame a millionaire.

There's also a visit to the stark landscape of New Mexico,adopted home of painter Georgia O'Keeffe; the statue in Greenville,Ohio, of 5-foot-tall sharpshooter Annie Oakley, who thought womenshould receive equal pay for equal work; the Philadelphia grave ofsinger Bessie Smith, finally marked in 1970 when two fans - one wassinger Janis Joplin - raised the money for it, and a planetariumhonoring teacher-astronaut Christa McAuliffe.