General Chat:

[MsJacquiiC]

Someone posted this on another Forum that I belong to... I found of the utmost interest and thought I'd pass it along to JPiC Members. This for all of us really - but especially if you're a woman and have wondered how did women gain the right to suffrage (voting priviledges)... I think you can appreciate the plight that some extremely courageous Women went through so that we could have this essential right to vote.

If you are a man, please forward to your Sisters or Mothers or Daughters or female Friends, etcetera.... I'm sure they can appreciate the plight d'courage as well. And obviously the presidential elections are not far off... This article could very well be the incentive that gets those Women (and Men) who have not exercised their right to vote in such a great while... Could be the incentive to get them to the voting booth, closing curtains and such, and pulling levers, casting with pride a vote for the candidate of their choice. It's an ESSENTIAL right really. And we need to be part of the decision or we are part of the problem.

Please read this and act on it in November. We have so many women to thank for the privilege of voting.

Read on...

How Women Got To Vote

A short history lesson on the privilege of voting...

The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'

They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold.

Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the 'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food -- all of it colorless slop -- was infested with worms.

When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because -- why, exactly?

We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

“ From HBO Films: Oscar-winner Hilary Swank leads an outstanding cast in the inspirational true story of two women who dared to make a stand for women's rights, and ended up shaping the future of America.”

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie 'Iron Jawed Angels.' It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was... With herself.

"One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie," she said. "What would those women think of the way I use -- or don't use -- my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn."

The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her "all over again."

HBO will run the movie periodically before releasing it on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunko night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized.

And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. "Alice Paul is strong," he said, "and brave. That doesn't make her crazy."

The doctor admonished the men with, "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."

[MsJacquiiC]

Women's Right To Vote

Susan B. Anthony Speech (1873 - After being arrested for casting a vote...)

“This speech was given by Susan B. Anthony after her arrest for casting an illegal vote in the presidential election of 1872. She was tried and then fined $100 but refused to pay.”

Quoted From HistoricalDocuments.com

Friends and fellow citizens:

I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any state to deny.

The preamble of the Federal Constitution says:

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people - women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government - the ballot.

“Susan B. Anthony, who died 14 years, 5 months and five days before passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote, was honored as the first American woman on circulating U.S. coinage.”

For any state to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of attainder, or, an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from women and their female posterity.

To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters, of every household - which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every home of the nation.

Webster, Worcester, and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office.

The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no state has a right to make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void, precisely as is every one against Negroes.

Susan B. Anthony - 1873

[butchiesmom]

I just forwarded this to one of my daughters. She had decided not to vote this year. I knew it was important to vote, for women, but this really punctuates that importance.

I knew women risked a lot to gain our right to vote but had no idea what they went through to get it. I had assumed they had just picketed no idea what price they paid.

I voted last week and was proud to do so.

hugs,
Gail

[MsJacquiiC]

Ah yes - The pride of voting! I didn't know (as well) MS GAIL how the "right to vote" was won - and these articles were just fabulous - I HAD to post them - especially considering this year as Presidential Election Year...

BTW - I posted edited the 2nd post to include an article I meant to post along with the main article - It's a speech that was given by Susan B. Anthony... Apparently she was arrested after casting a vote in some election... It's definitely an interesting speech she gave - so I think it's only right to pay homage to these Pioneering Women!

Thanx for commenting

Jacquii.

[MsJacquiiC]

The Following Text Is Quoted:

Originally Posted by MsJacquiiC

Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void, precisely as is every one against Negroes.

Susan B. Anthony - 1873

Just wow! This was a tremendous speech and I am just a bit speechless at the moment... Just wow! Such bravery - no wonder she is honored via American coinage. Just wow! A bit of a history lesson...

Jacquii.