Day 177

"If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to forment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." - Abigail Adams, 1776

#np - Hero by Mariah Carey

We're slowing it down today.  I'm sad to say that when I blogged my song yesterday morning I wasn't aware that it was International Women's Day.  How could I not have known?!  However, I'm rectifying this situation today.

It's no secret that my absolute favorite right, as an American, is the right to vote.  I vote in every election possible.  I research candidates and become informed.  I just love it.  And it's so hard for me to comprehend a time in our history where women didn't have the right to vote.  Until 1920, women couldn't vote nationwide in federal elections.  Voting rights across the states were sporadic at best.  Wyoming was the first state to grant full voting rights to their female citizens.  Kentucky was the first to grant voting rights to women in school board elections.  A small step but one that had to be made.

I spent a part of yesterday doing some research.  I've always wanted to know more about the women who worked to give me my favorite right.  We've seen sensationalized movies about them but I want more than that.  I looked up suffrage history and quotes from suffragists.  I found out that several of the major suffrage leaders were from Kentucky!  I never knew this.  Why was I never taught this in school?

Thinking back, why wasn't I taught a lot more about women's history?  Why do I only know Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton?  Why not Madeline McDowell Breckinridge and Lucretia Mott?  Did you know that Madeline McDowell Breckinridge (of Lexington, KY) fought her entire adult life for women's suffrage and then died just weeks after casting her first and only vote for president in 1920?  I didn't.

I've decided that I need to know more.   After I graduate, I'd like to spend some of my much-anticipated free time learning more about the suffrage movement and the women to whom I owe a great deal of gratitude.  They should be remembered as American heros.  Their path wasn't easy.  It wasn't popular.  But it was American.

Women have come a long way but our fight isn't over.  We must continue to fight for equal pay.  We must continue to fight for the rights to our own bodies.  We must continue to fight for social acceptance.  We will continue to break glass ceilings and to rebuff untoward sexual advances.  We will require respect and dignity.  We are equal.  No more, no less.  Equal.

So happy belated international women's day.  I hope you take time to know a little bit about where our rights come from.  Somewhere, a long time ago, a group of women stood their ground and said their disenfranchisement wasn't fair.  Sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe in.  When it's right and just.

Amendment XIX of the Constitution of the United States of America

"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."

You better believe I have a copy of the Constitution on my end table with a Rosie the Riveter postcard marking the spot of the 19th Amendment.  That's how I roll.