Debby Applegate

Debby Applegate (born February 1, 1968) is an American historian and biographer.

Quotes

Connecticut, the Land of Steady Habits, where clocks, granite, and schoolteachers were its chief exports, and the specter of Puritanism still stalked every crevice of its rocky hills.
- Ch. 1

Connecticut Yankees were a wily, peculiar breed, according to early American folklore, with a slippery shrewdness that could confound even Satan himself.
- Ch. 1

"Two Can Make History", The New York Times (May 25, 2008)

In 1869, when outraged women demanded to know why they were not included in the right to vote, they were informed by their allies in Congress that public opinion left room for just one minority group to make it through the door of suffrage and that this was "the Negro's hour."

we again are hearing the old discouraging response: No, Mrs. Clinton cannot share the ticket because history shows that "the public mind" is too conservative to accept both a black man and a white woman in the seat of power.
But if history offers a lesson here, it is not that Americans cannot handle too much change at one time or that we must inch our way, one by one, through the door of equality. Rather, it is that opportunities for genuine change are rare and when they occur we must kick the door off the hinges while we can. It is much harder to pry open the public mind once it has shut itself up again.