Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Cherish the vote!

Cherish the vote. Now that you have it. Too many places women still cannot vote.

In 1916, Alice Paul formed the National Woman's Party (NWP), a group focused on the passage of a national suffrage amendment. Over 200 NWP supporters, the Silent Sentinels, were arrested in 1917 while picketing the White House, some of whom went on hunger strike and endured forced feeding after being sent to prison. Under the leadership of Carrie Chapman Catt, the two-million-member NAWSA also made a national suffrage amendment its top priority. After a hard-fought series of votes in the U.S. Congress and in state legislatures, the Nineteenth Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution on August 18, 1920. It states, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." [Source: Women's Suffrage in the United States. Wikipedia]

Women's suffragists parade in New York City in 1917, carrying placards with the signatures of more than a million women.
[Source: New York Times. Created October 1, 1917]


Thursday, October 24, 2024

...we didn’t even have the vote. You can do so much more!!!

Remember, Jane and I and the Hull House Women accomplished what we did, and it was amazing. And we didn’t even have the vote. You can do so much more!!!

Some of the picket line of Nov. 10, 1917.   [Source: Library of Congress. Harris & Ewing, Washington, DC (Photographer). Public domain]



Sunday, October 20, 2024

Elections? Voting? You would rather have it than not, even with all the problems

Elections? Voting? You would rather have it than not, even with all the problems. Democracy? We can’t give up on democracy, even if we are tearing our hair out.

Portrait of Jane Addams (1860-1935), sitting in an automobile in Chicago, Illinois. A policeman on horseback is visible in the background. [Source: Chicago Daily News DN-0064813. No Copyright. July 22, 1915]


Tuesday, October 15, 2024

A law in your way? Change it!

A law in your way? Change it! Get a court or a legislature to change it. Get yourself out there to make it happen. Remember it is all about getting to the authority. Who has the authority to accomplish what you want to do? Many places to hide with in the law’s obscurity.

Amid rain, a large crowd of demonstrators gathers in front of the county courthouse in Montgomery, Alabama where Martin Luther King Jr. meets with city and county officials regarding police brutality during the previous day's peaceful march, March 17, 1965. [Credit: Chicago History Museum, ICHi-075006; Declan Haun, photographer]
Amid rain, a large crowd of demonstrators gathers in front of the county courthouse in Montgomery, Alabama where Martin Luther King Jr. meets with city and county officials regarding police brutality during the previous day's peaceful march, March 17, 1965.
[Credit: Chicago History Museum, ICHi-075006; Declan Haun, photographer]


 

Thursday, October 3, 2024

My mother wrote the most marvelous letters

My mother wrote the most marvelous letters. She wrote on both sides of the paper, across lines already written to save the paper. Still I could read them. She could barely let me out of her sight after Anna died, wouldn’t let me go to school. I can’t blame her.

[Source: The New York Public Library Archives & Manuscripts division maintains a collection, Florence Kelley Papers, including her correspondence.]