VOTE NOV 6th 2012

Women of the United States of America.  A woman's right to vote her-story is a surprising one.
Answer and or consider the following questions and answer.:

 

Did you know women did have the right to vote before the 20th century?

1776 Abigail Adams writes to her husband, John Adams, asking him to "remember the ladies" in the new code of laws. Adams replies the men will fight the "despotism of the petticoat." 1777 Women lose the right to vote in New York. 1780 Women lose the right to vote in Massachusetts. 1784 Women lose the right to vote in New Hampshire. 1787 US Constitutional Convention places voting qualifications in the hands of the states. Women in all states except New Jersey lose the right to vote. 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft publishes Vindication of the Rights of Women in England. 1807 Women lose the right to vote in New Jersey, the last state to revoke the right.
There is a huge reason for federal laws.  The above history is an excellent example.  We need the balance of federal and state to protect all Americans.  Women are under attack today and when you hear "well, we can let the states decide" like the republicans keep saying- divide and conquer. It took 113 years for women to recover the right to vote. When the suffrage movement began in earnest in 1848. The plan of the National Woman Suffrage Association was to gain the vote state by state because it had been lost state by state in 18th century. By 1913, another generation had another vision. Lead by Alice Paul and Lucy Burn, they lead an aggressive campaign to gain women's suffrage for entire country. In 65 years there were only a handful of states that allowed women to vote and as Alice Paul said that by this rate it would take another 100 years for all states ratify the vote for women. VOTE woman! VOTE
Did Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Matilda Joslyn Gage live to see the 19th Amendment and then exercise her right to vote? Sadly, no.  Anthony died in 1906, Stanton died in 1902 and Gage died in 1898. All three of these women gave heart and lives to cause of Women's Suffrage. Please vote. It is your Liberty at stake. Now, who was Matilda Joslyn Gage? We always read and hear about Anthony and Stanton, as the Mothers of women's suffrage, but there was another who deserves just as much as credit. Gage.  She was unable to be a Secca Falls, but Gage was at the Convention in 1852.  Together these three women created the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) What is a feminist?  A person who supports human rights for women.  Men and children can be feminist too!
I sometimes hear a woman say, "Now, I am not a feminist...".  And what she is saying is she should not have Rights, Liberty and should not be included in "We The People..". Why would any woman give up her rights?  There are many women, girls throughout the world who are standing up for their rights to be a feminist and here in the United States we are in a dangerous time in which we could loose so much of our freedom.  Please, don't take it for granted. In a blink , it could all disappear.  Just another reason to VOTE!!!

September 25

                            LET HER VOICE BE HEARD

On this day in 1926 The League of Nations began the work of The Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery  an international treaty. It was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on March 9th, 1927 which is also the same day it went into effect.
. By 1956 most countries signed this Treaty. They are leading the fight against Slavery. Even today there people mostly "girl-child" and women are robbed of their rights and sold into slavery and used for prostitution. This is most disturbing and must be stopped. Girls stolen and forced into the sex trade.It must be stopped.  This is also happening in the United States.  The "johns" who continue to use and pay money continue this horror. And when caught the johns are just charged with a misdemeanor.  Girls and women throughout the world are in need of protection and if you are not part of the solution then you are part of the problem.  Do not turn a blind eye.  Speak out.
Other rights are quietly stolen in plain view as women struggle to control their own future and claim their freedom from violence, sexual abuse, and control of their bodies.  Education, suffrage and Laws that make a difference are seriously needed for women own/claim their place in the world without any family member or State controlling their future.
Look for ways to support all women, young and old.  Until we are completely equal and respect all, the horror will continue.  What girl of any age should have to suffer this fate.

*I published this last year and in this one short year women in the United States are under attack from politicians who seem to forget the Constitution.  WE THE PEOPLE, Women are people.

October 1st and 2nd PBS  is airing the documentary, HALF THE SKY.  It addresses this very serious issues of  women and young girls stolen and or sold into slavery prostitution.

 http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/half-the-sky/film/   and to get involved
http://www.halftheskymovement.org/ 

To read the Treaty that deals with slavery visit:  http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6b36fb.html 

October 1,2012:  As I begin to watch PBS "Half The Sky" I look at the United Nations Treaty- and the word Suppress  why not ABOLISH, why not Abolish?









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September 24

Born this day in 1825, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, poet, writer and abolitionist and suffragist.  Ms. Harper was born to free parents in Baltimore,MD.  Her mother died when Harper was the young age of three and then she was raised by her aunt and uncle. Her uncle Rev. William Watkins was a civil right activist and greatly influenced Harper's life. She was educated at the Academy for Negro Youth.

At the age of fourteen Harper found a job as a seamstress in a Quaker home which had a extensive library. As Maryland became more divided on the issue of slavery, a move to Ohio for the family. It is in Ohio Harper became the first woman to teach at Union Seminary. 

In 1845 Harper's first book of poetry Forest Leaves or Autumn Leaves was published. The book has been lost to herstory. Her second book of poetry Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects,  was published in 1854 to great popularity and went into reprint several times over.  And in 1859, the story  The Two Offers was published in Anglo-African Magazine. Ms. Harper's career as a writer was a successful one. She was also very popular on the lecture circuit.  Reading her poetry which often dealt with sins of slavery and a powerful introduction into the subject of abolishing slavery.  After the Civil War, Ms. Harper took up the cause of women's suffrage using her lecturing skills to make sure the voice of women of color.  Throughout Harper's life she wrote for magazines and newspapers creating a strong voice for African American women.

In 1860, at the age of 35, Frances married and retired from public life.  She produced one daughter in 1862, and sadly in 1865, her husband died.

Frances Harper returned to public life of lecture tours and writing focusing on the women's suffrage movement and fighting for women of color.

In 1892 she  published  one of her most popular novel,  Iola Leroy or Shadows Uplifted.  (I would like to suggest reading this novel online.) 
As a professional writer this amazing woman Frances Harper was a voice for Human Rights. In her personal life she put her voice into action, using her hands and heart to help the Underground Railroad and all women in their struggle for the right to vote .  She died in 1911.

I have include this poem by Harper because it captures emotional power of her work.

Eliza Harris

By Frances Ellen Watkins Harper 1825–1911

Like a fawn from the arrow, startled and wild,

A woman swept by us, bearing a child;

In her eye was the night of a settled despair,

And her brow was o’ershaded with anguish and care.

She was nearing the river—in reaching the brink,

She heeded no danger, she paused not to think!

For she is a mother—her child is a slave—

And she’ll give him his freedom, or find him a grave!

’Twas a vision to haunt us, that innocent face—

So pale in its aspect, so fair in its grace;

As the tramp of the horse and the bay of the hound,

With the fetters that gall, were trailing the ground!

She was nerved by despair, and strengthen’d by woe,

As she leap’d o’er the chasms that yawn’d from below;

Death howl’d in the tempest, and rav’d in the blast,

But she heard not the sound till the danger was past.

Oh! how shall I speak of my proud country’s shame?

Of the stains on her glory, how give them their name?

How say that her banner in mockery waves—

Her “star-spangled banner”—o’er millions of slaves?

How say that the lawless may torture and chase

A woman whose crime is the hue of her face?

How the depths of forest may echo around

With the shrieks of despair, and the bay of the hound?

With her step on the ice, and her arm on her child,

The danger was fearful, the pathway was wild;

But, aided by Heaven, she gained a free shore,

Where the friends of humanity open’d their door.

So fragile and lovely, so fearfully pale,

Like a lily that bends to the breath of the gale,

Save the heave of her breast, and the sway of her hair,

You’d have thought her a statue of fear and despair.

In agony close to her bosom she press’d

The life of her heart, the child of her breast:—

Oh! love from its tenderness gathering might,

Had strengthen’d her soul for the dangers of flight.

But she’s free!—yes, free from the land where the slave

From the hand of oppression must rest in the grave;

Where bondage and torture, where scourges and chains

Have plac’d on our banner indelible stains.

The bloodhounds have miss’d the scent of her way;

The hunter is rifled and foil’d of his prey;

Fierce jargon and cursing, with clanking of chains,

Make sounds of strange discord on Liberty’s plains.

With the rapture of love and fullness of bliss,

She plac’d on his brow a mother’s fond kiss:—

Oh! poverty, danger and death she can brave,

For the child of her love is no longer a slave!

poetryfoundation.org

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September 21

On this day 1981, Susan Day O'Conner became the first woman of the United States Supreme Court.

Born this day in 1884, Doctor Ethel Percy Andrus, an educator and founder of  NRTA  and AARP.  Dr. Andrus began her career as a teacher, and she also was the first woman to serve as a  high school principal. In 1947 Dr. Andrus realized retired teachers were living on a very small wages and without health care. She founded the National Retired Teachers Association.  To solve the problem of one group she solved the problem of millions of retirees by creating the American Association of Retired Persons and the monthly magazine which is still being published today.

       "What I spent, is gone; what I kept, I lost; but what I gave away will be mine forever."
                                                 Ethel Percy Andrus

 

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September 20th

Born this day in 1822, Elizabeth Smith Miller, a suffragist and abolitionist, she was best known for freeing herself from the Victorian dress code for women.  Most women of the Suffrage Movement viewed the constraints of  the corset and huge skirts upon skirts a horror to wear!  As Ms. Miller wrote in her diary:
I was also blessed by the tonic of Mrs. Stanton's inspiring words: "The question is no longer [rags], how do you look, but woman, how do you feel?"  And the Mrs. Stanton she refers to is the one and only Cady Stanton who was one of the leaders of  American Suffrage Movement.
Woman!  How do you feel!?  Little did I know when I began this blog in 2006 women in the United States would be attacked about how we use our bodies.  It is barbaric.  Stand strong and vote this mind set out of office and out of our lives!

Also on this day, Belva Ann Lockwood was nominated by The Equal Rights Party (formed in 1872) as their presidential candidate for 1884.  Yes, 1884.  And Ms. Lockwood wasn't the first nominee, Victoria Woodhull was  and she offered Frederick Douglas as her running mate.  See, women were banned from voting, but there was no law preventing them from running for office.  Ms. Woodhull paid a great price for even trying for public office.  Slander which landed her in the courtroom to defend herself of crimes which were all thrown out, but the damage was done. Woodhull was bankrupt.

On this day in 1973, Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs. Oh yes, the "man versus woman" tennis match aired on television and the Lady took  the prize!  There was never any doubt.
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