Today, August 26, is Women's Equality Day in the US. It is the day that the 19th amendment was ratified in 1920 giving all women over the age of 21 the right to vote, but most women of color were not able to exercise that freedom until after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. It was the result of a 72 year struggle for women's suffrage and came 137 years after the ratification of the US Constitution in 1787.Hat tip to John Calvi for sharing this through the Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns listserve.
For more information, you can view a timeline of women's suffrage in the USA.
Also you can read an article about Quaker, Lucretia Mott's anti-slavery and pro-women work.
Comments
It still moved forward, which was good, but seemed like it took more than twice as long as it had to. Just finished reading Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism, and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull so I've really been thinking a lot about this lately.
Thanks for the info...
good to hear from you. That book sounds amazing. I really want to learn more about women's studies as well as trans studies. I'm going to check out that book. Thanks.
But it was interesting to read about all the stuff below the surface - the stuff we don't generally know about the Women's suffrage movement.
It gave me a heck of a lot to think about re: the push for marriage/civil rights for gays.
It's hard because I've always felt that it is important to have both the groups who don't take no for an answer - who refuse to sit in the back of the bus, as it were, and also the groups who say...OK, we don't have to call it marriage if it makes you uncomfortable, but we need to have these important civil rights. Yes, I know I'm mixing my civil rights movements up. :)
Kind of how folks say that without Malcom X, the whites wouldn't have started listening to Martin Luther King, ya know? Because folks got scared of the militant option and decided that at least MLK was kinder, gentler. I am not sure I'm explaining myself well...
Anyway, my point being...I've always thought it was important to have groups like soulforce, and then have groups who are much more militant, because all of it is needed to push toward change.
But in reading this book - I don't know. There were factions of the women's rights groups that wanted free love and stuff that was just freaking men out! And it made them crack down and say - heck no, we won't give women the vote cuz next thing you know they will all be free-lovers! If they'd just concentrated on getting the vote, they would have had it so many years sooner (imo).
So sometimes I wonder about the parallel with the gay rights stuff, and the marriage vs. civil rights thing. I wonder how much a constitutional ammendment will set us back - whereas many states were originally starting to warm up to the whole civil union thing...you know?
Just my rambly thoughts at the moment....