More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Ninety-nine years ago, ERA author Alice Paul opined in the local Washington newspaper that women’s equality would easily be won by 2023. It’s painful that her prediction is so wrong—but last month’s vote in the House of Representatives to remove the deadline for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment means American women are closer to constitutional equality than ever before.
It was clearly a difficult decision for the Rankin—the only woman ever to serve in Congress, and who was sworn in just four days ago. She was one of less than 12 House Members who did not vote on the first roll call. But on the second call she rose to her feet and said: “I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war.”
“The Wizard of Oz” was deeply influenced by the ideology of radical feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage. Gage may be best known as the mother-in-law of Oz novelist L. Frank Baum, but more importantly, she was an activist, who would be considered as radical in our day as she was in hers.
In elementary school, my kids are already getting the message that when men do something it is called “history,” but when women do something it is called “women’s history.” As a historian, I know this is not remotely true and I do not want to have to unteach my children (or yours) these myths when they get to college.
Though nothing is ever certain in politics, there do appear to be enough votes in the new Congress to pass the Susan B. Anthony Amendment by the two-thirds majority required and send it to the states for ratification by 36 of 48. Regardless of whether that final step in the ratification process takes place before next year’s Presidential election or not, the end of the struggle is in sight, so it’s definitely appropriate to begin thinking about how women’s votes can best be used after the battle to win them is over.
The nine members of the suffragist Army of the Hudson continue on day six of their hike from Newark, New Jersey to Washington, D.C.
Mary Church Terrell, a Black civil rights activist, was left out of history. In her new book, Alison Parker writes of Terrell’s lifelong militancy. In her Aug. 19 nomination acceptance speech, Vice President Kamala Harris stated: “Women like Mary Church Terrell and Mary McCleod Bethune. Fannie Lou Hamer and Diane Nash. Constance Baker Motley and […]
Today the National Woman’s Party announced a preliminary draft of a measure to transform the ideal of equal rights for women and men into a Constitutional amendment permanently and explicitly mandating it nationwide.
Woman suffrage has returned to America! For the first time since 1807, when the New Jersey Legislature disenfranchised that State’s women voters, there is now a part of the United States where a woman can legally cast a ballot: The Territory of Wyoming!
After fifty-five National American Woman Suffrage Association convention delegates vowed to stay in Washington, D.C., all winter if that was what had to be done in order to meet with President Wilson, he has agreed to receive a N.A.W.S.A. deputation at the White House at 1 p.m. on the day after tomorrow.