Minnie Fisher Cunningham, Texas's most important female political activist, directed Texas's woman suffrage campaign, helped found the National League of Women Voters and the Woman's National Democratic Club and was also a leader of the post-1945 Texas liberal movement. This is a biography of the politician affectionately known as Minnie Fish.

An important and timely book that not only advances understanding of twentieth-century Texas political history, an understudied period, but also speaks to significant debates about women's political endeavors in the years between suffrage and the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Cunningham's life story demonstrates that feminist activism did not disappear so much as it assumed alternative forms.

"A seamless, well-organized, and thoroughly researched political biography of Minnie Fisher Cunningham...[T]his work is thoroughly grounded in twentieth-century state and national history--politics, reform, race relations, labor issues, war and economic depression, and women's movements. This is the book's most impressive and edifying achievement."--The Journal of American History "[E]xcellently written and well-documented biography....[A] welcome and substantive contribution to the study of women's political activism in the fight for state and federal suffrage laws."--H-Net "Judith N. McArthur and Harold L. Smith have told the Minnie Fisher Cunningham saga with political sophistication and in sufficient detail to illuminate a century of political life in Texas and the country as a whole....For this deeply researched, generous, tough-minded biography, we are indebted to Ms. McArthur and Mr. Smith, who have esurrected a woman of whom Texans can be inordinately proud."--The Dallas Morning News "When I went to work for the national League of Women Voters in 1944 'Minnie Fish' was a legend. Now that I have read this wonderful book I know why."--Anne Firor Scott, author of Natural Allies: Women's Associations in American Life "This is a splendid biography of a determined woman. Thoroughly researched and absorbingly written, it exposes the barriers built into the Texas political system and the persistence necessary for women to be heard. Cunningham's work for woman suffrage, for better laws, and for more democracy illuminates the long and difficult road to political participation. It took dedication and sacrifice for women to break into politics."--Jo Freeman, author of A Room at a Time: How Women Entered Party Politics "From suffragist to Left Feminist, Minnie Fisher Cunningham has been hailed by her contemporaries as 'the South's best female political organizer' and by Texas Monthly as the 'Agitator of the Century.' This important book reveals that she was an extraordinary Texan, whose talent for politics led to two campaigns for office and took her from the New Deal to the New Frontier. Minnie Fish, as FDR called her, worked steadfastly to improve the lot of women and of African Americans despite southern proscriptions against them. Readers will rejoice in this well-crafted biography which provides the only current account of a southern state suffrage president and her political afterlife."--Elizabeth Hayes Turner, University of North Texas