Fighting for our Rights

Yesterday, there was an election.

Did you vote? I'm not asking for whom; as I told my students, I can't discuss that. The privacy of the voting booth could be likened to that of a priest or doctor/patient confidentiality {at least when you teach school...not everyone falls under that level of secrecy}. When my students asked me who I voted for, I told them I couldn't tell them because I wasn't allowed to influence their opinions or views on things.

"But," I told them, "what's most important is that I voted." {Yes, I just quoted myself there.}

Are you aware that our country has been in existence since 1776? That, on a global scale, our country is a mere fledgling at only 240 years old? And that women have only had the right to vote for less than one hundred of those years?

96 years. Women have been able to vote for only 96 years. That's 24 presidential elections.

And that's pathetic.

Yesterday, my Facebook status read, "Exercise your right. We fought hard to get it, ladies." To be very, very clear, the "fight" that I was referring to was not on the battlefield. It was not fought by veterans {although I am incredibly grateful for all soldiers who fought to protect our right to vote, among other rights}. No, the fight I meant was the fight to get our right to vote. And those soldiers were of a very different breed. 

I was thanking women like Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. Have you ever heard of them? Alice Paul was arrested for picketing the White House {not illegal, by the way}. She went on a hunger strike in prison, was sent to the mental ward, and was force-fed through a tube. Lucy Burns was also arrested and, after requesting basic prisoner rights for herself and the women she was arrested with, was chained by her hands to the ceiling of her cell and left to hang there all night. Inez Milholland was the face of the suffragette movement--a beautiful woman who died of pernicious anemia because she refused to stop working for her cause. And these are only the women who were in the fight toward the very end. Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton {both of whom had been fighting for equal suffrage since 1848...both of whom died before the 19th amendment was passed}. Lucretia Mott. Carrie Chapman Catt. Look them up.

If you are so inclined, I highly recommend you watch the movie Iron Jawed Angels. Produced by HBO in 2004, it centers on the final legs of the suffrage movement, namely on Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. It literally moved me to tears when I watched it. And it made me mad. How many women don't vote these days? How many people in general don't feel their vote counts and therefore don't vote? Seriously...I don't care who you vote for {I mean, I do, but I'm not going to talk about it here, because my needs and views and opinions are different from yours, I'm sure}. What would those women, who fought so hard, think of the way I use {or don't use} my right to vote? Those women, the ones who fought so hard just to get that right, were beaten and mocked and spat upon and tormented and accused of terrible things—all because they wanted to be able to simply enter a polling place and cast their ballot.

If you want more of a crash course, check out this video. My sister uses it when she teaches about the suffrage movement to her students {she uses all kinds of cool things like this}. The singer is Alice Paul, essentially, and the scenes with the men voting for the legislation are almost spot-on. The men who supported women's suffrage wore white flowers. And the final voter changed his vote at the last second because of a telegram he got from his mother. 

If you think this doesn't pertain to you, consider this. If I had been born 100 years earlier, I would have been denied the vote. My great-grandmothers {only three generations previous to me} were all born without the right to vote. I remember reading an article quite a few years ago written by a local woman who was in her 90s. She remembered fondly the day the women got the vote and stated that she had voted in every election that occurred during her lifetime. Because she had that right. 

Whenever I tell my fourth graders about voting and mention that women were not always able to vote, I love the reaction I get from those nine- and ten-year-old girls. They are completely gobsmacked. "What?" they shriek. "Why?" And I hate that the answer is so simple. 

Because women were women. And that seemed to indicate to some that they could not--and should not be allowed to--make a decision using their brain. 

Because that makes sense.

But thankfully we live in a world where women have the right to vote. I have not seen the movie Suffragette that came out a year or so ago, which is based on the fight for women's suffrage in England. But to end things on a more lighthearted note {even though there is nothing lighthearted about denying half a populous the right to vote for 144 years}, here is a wonderful scene {and song} about women's suffrage.

Well done, indeed, Sister Suffragettes.

~Stay Gold!