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“You cannot be neutral. You must either join with us who believe in the bright future or be destroyed by those who would return us to the dark past.” Daisy Elizabeth Adams Lampkin
There must always be a remedy for wrong and injustice if we only know how to find it.” Ida B. Wells
We have made a way when there was no way.” Rosalyn Terborg-Penn
I appeal on behalf of four millions of men, women, and children who are chattels in the Southern States of America, Not because they are identical with my race and color, though I am proud of that identity, but because they are men and women. Sarah Parker Redmond
Seeking no favors because of our color, nor patronage because of our needs, we knock at the bar of justice, asking an equal chance.” Mary Church Terrell
The crowning glory of American citizenship is that it may be shared equally by people of every nationality, complexion, and sex. Mary-Ann Shadd Cary
Now is the time for our women to begin to try to lift up their heads and plant the roots of progress under the hearthstone. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
If you as parents cut corners, your children will too. If you lie, they will too. If you spend all your money on yourselves and tithe no portion of it for charities, colleges, churches, synagogues, and civic causes, your children won’t either. And if parents snicker at racial and gender jokes, another generation will pass on the poison adults still have not had the courage to snuff out. Marian Wright Edelman
There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again. (Equal Rights Convention, New York, 1867) Sojourner Truth
Are You Familiar with Women’s Equality Day? Women’s Equality Day is on August 26, and it is the centennial celebration of the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote in the USA. It commemorates the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex. While many black women participated in the movement, they were excluded from the historical records celebrating this achievement. According to the book, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920 (1998) by Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, which some saw as a response to the “History of Women’s Suffrage,” a six-volume work, begun in 1881 and edited by Anthony, Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage, the American suffrage movement erased from historical records, the many black women who attended suffrage meetings, organized suffrage clubs, and promoted the cause to grant women the freedom to vote.
Rosalyn Terborg-Penn‘s book identified more than 120 black women, including Sojourner Truth, Mary-Ann Shadd Cary, Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, Sarah Parker Remond, and many other black women who were described as “hundreds of nameless black women.” These notable women and others had participated tirelessly in the suffrage fight. The black suffragettes continued their efforts because they knew the goal was bigger than them and to give up would be dangerous for the plight of black people. The racial divide grew and became glaringly obvious in 1913 when the white organizers of a major suffragist parade in Washington ordered black participants to march in the rear. So, even though the 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, said that the right to vote could not be denied on the basis of sex, Blacks of both sexes, especially in the South, were effectively barred from voting by poll taxes, literacy tests, and many other forms of intimidation that included lynchings. It was not until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that black people found their footing in the polls. Many of the photos, in the collages in this post, are of African American Women in the Suffrage Movement and a few notables from a long list. Do you recognize any of the women featured in the photos? I have also included at least one quote from the many women featured here. Please share in the comments
African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920 (1998)Rosalyn Terborg-Penn
National Women’s History Alliance: Returning the Suffrage Heroes to the Pages of History
Motivation Mondays: International Women’s Day #GenerationEquality #EachforEqual
Voting Rights for All After the 19th Amendment
The 19th Amendment did not guarantee that all women and men in the United States could vote. Securing this essential right has been a long struggle that for some, continues on to this day.
• 1924 Indian Citizenship Act – Native Americans deemed US citizens, but states continue to decide who votes. Many continue to disenfranchise Native Americans.
• 1943 Magnuson Act – Chinese in America granted the right to become citizens, and therefore to vote (the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 previously prevented this).
• 1962 New Mexico is the last state to enfranchise Native Americans.
• 1965 Voting Rights Act – African Americans and Native Americans continued to face exclusion from voting through mechanisms like poll taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminated many of these. From “The 19th Amendment: A Crash Course,” National Park Service, nps.gov
“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” Ida B. Wells
“Lifting as we climb … we knock at the bar of justice, asking an equal chance.” Mary Church Terrell
“The true aim of female education should be, not a development of one or two, but all the faculties of the human soul, because no perfect womanhood is developed by imperfect culture.” Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
I do not think the mere extension of the ballot a panacea for all the ills of our national life. What we need to-day is not simply more voters, but better voters. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
“Countermovements among racists and sexists and Nazifiers are just as relentless as dirt on a coffee table…Every housewife knows that if you don’t sooner or later dust…the whole place will be dirty again.”Florynce Kennedy
When the ballot is put into the hands of the American woman the world is going to get a correct estimate of the Negro woman. It will find her a tower of strength of which poets have never sung, orators have never spoken, and scholars have never written. Nannie Helen Burroughs
“I had reasoned this out in my mind, there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.” Harriet Tubman
“Whatever glory belongs to the race for a development unprecedented in history for the given length of time, a full share belongs to the womanhood of the race.”Mary Mcleod Bethune
Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness. Oprah Winfrey
If any of us hopes to survive, s/he must meet the extremity of the American female condition with an immediate and political response. The thoroughly destructive and indefensible subjugation of the majority of Americans cannot continue except at the peril of the entire body politic. June Jordan
Let’s celebrate Women’s Equality Day because, as I pointed out above, today, August 26, 2020, is Women’s Suffrage Centennial Day – the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution which prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex. Even though so many women here and around the world continue to suffer from discriminatory practices and all forms of gender inequities, we must never give up. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” The road to equality has been a tough and hard-won battle, and it took the collective effort of so many women from all walks of life to achieve it. Did you know that in 1944, skilled female workers earned an average weekly wage of $31.21? Despite federal regulations requiring equitable pay for similar work, their male counterparts in similar positions earned $54.65 weekly. When the war ended, some women were ready to return to their pre-war domestic lives. However, others who wanted or needed to continue working, found their opportunities were limited as men returned home and the demand for war materials decreased. Today, women earn between 83-98 cents on the dollar for the same jobs that men do for more money. Minority women earn less than white women and the efforts to extend equity to all women remain a bone of contention in Congress. As we gather to celebrate 100 years of having the vote, we must not forget our sisters who are voiceless, stuck in minimum wage jobs with no healthcare, or with limited resources and education. The gender pay gap is real and remains a challenge here and elsewhere. Come back for more on the history of this Important Event.
Smithsonian: Five You Should Know: African American Suffragists
Motivation Mondays: Women’s Equality Day #Quotes
Thoughtco: Important Black Women in American History
Sojourner Truth (1797-1883): Ain’t I A Woman?
Delivered 1851 Women’s Rights Convention, Old Stone Church (since demolished), Akron, Ohio via nps.govWell, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that ‘twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [member of audience whispers, “intellect”] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?
Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.
Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing more to say. [1]
The details for Motivation Mondays are below. Join in! The themes for JUL – AUG 2020 are:
07/01 – 01 SUMMER, 04 Independence Day, 06 D-Day,
07/05 – 07 World Chocolate Day
07/12 – 18 Nelson Mandela Day,
07/19 – 24 International Self-Care Day
07/26 – 28 Parents Day, 30 International Day of Friendship, World Day Against Trafficking in Persons
08/01 – 01 SUMMER, 04 Obama Day, 07 Purple Heart Day, Cat Day
08/09 – 09 Book Lovers Day, 12 International Youth Day, 15 National Relaxation Day
08/16 – 17 Nonprofit day, 19 National Aviation Day, World Humanitarian Day, World Photography Day, 22 Commemoration of Victims of Religious Violence Day
08/23 – 23 Slave Trade Remembrance Day, 26 Women’s Equality Day, National Dog Day
08/30 – 30 Day of Victims of Enforced Disappearance Day, 31 Drug Overdose Awareness Day