January 2020
Happy Anniversary You Beautiful 19th Amendment!
Amy Simon as Susan B. Anthony
The SHE’S HISTORY! 2020 celebration begins: In San Diego on Saturday, March 21, at the Women’s Museum. Then Los Angeles on Sunday, March 29, at 2 pm at The Lounge Theatre in Hollywood (ticket link above). And on Sunday, July 12, LA MADE presents a reading of the all-female full cast version of SHE Is History! at the historic Los Angeles downtown library’s Mark Taper Auditorium. Watch future emails for ticket info.
In 1776, when women were thought to be “delicate creatures with brains too small to trifle with important matters,” Abigail Adams famously wrote to her husband, John, who later became our second president. He was away in Philadelphia with other men, quite busy creating our present government by “establishing a code of laws.”
“And by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would Remember the Ladies”
dear Abby wrote, “and be more generous and favourable than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands….”
He wrote back. “As to your extraordinary Code of Laws, I cannot but laugh,” and reminded her of her place. She did not find this funny as she was quite busy during their 10-year separation proving him wrong. Unlike her husband, Abigail Adams was an astute businesswoman. She didn’t just run their family farm. She saved it, during wartime, and all the while raising five kids – one who turned out to be president! Dear Abby wrote lots of letters to her dear husband – two thousand, in fact.
She had more thoughts to share.
It took until August 26, 1919 for the Nineteenth Amendment to be signed into law for women to FINALLY have a voice in the government.
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When Jeannette Rankin became the first woman elected to Congress in 1917, they had to build a Ladies Room for her! She was unable to legally vote (although some states did allow women to vote). But, as a Congresswoman and devoted pacifist, she COULD vote for a war resolution – World War One, but chose not to. “I wish to stand for my country,” she said, “but I cannot vote for war. I felt the first time the first woman had a chance to say no to war, she should say it.”
Jeannette Rankin served a second term from 1941 to 1943, and again voted no for World War Two. This made her the only Congressperson to vote no to two World Wars.
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The 2020 Centennial celebration began January 1st in Pasadena, California, with the inspiring “Years of Hope, Years of Courage” Rose Parade Suffrage float. It won the award for Best Theme! Many dedicated feminists, along with The Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission and Pasadena Celebrates 2020, an initiative of the National Women’s History Alliance, worked all year to make this happen.
And happen it did! On the float was civil rights leader Dolores Huerta along with descendants of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman and Ida B. Wells!! Behind the float, as you can see above, were 100 “outwalkers”, suffragists and suffragents! All wearing white to honor the women who came before. National celebrations will continue all year. To learn more: https://www.womensvote100.org/
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Alice Paul celebrating the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.
We owe so much to mover, shaker, Equal Rights Amendment maker Alice Paul. Never married, this child free, brilliant strategist presented herself as a lovely, feminine, soft-spoken lady. But there was nothing ladylike in her demands. She was a militant, hunger-striking, Nineteenth Amendment passing suffragist, mentored by Emmeline Pankhurst; England’s leading militant, window-smashing Suffragette. The day before President-elect Woodrow Wilson’s Inauguration, Alice Paul brilliantly organized the 1913 Washington D.C. Suffrage Parade. Eight thousand women marched down Pennsylvania Avenue for the right to vote. It was the largest parade in Washington history!
1913 Washington D.C. Suffrage Parade
But as the crowd became violent and unruly, the women were mobbed, yelled at, spat on, manhandled, and had lit cigars thrown at them.
And the police just looked the other way.
The out of control crowds at the 1913 Washington D.C. Suffrage Parade.
As a Cultural HERstorian, I spend most of my time looking back, learning and sharing about amazing women not included in our HIStory books. I often hear how far we’ve come. And my response is always, “We could only make progress. We started with nothing!” Hell, it was only in 1993 that women were “allowed” to wear pants on the Senate floor!
In 2019, women still earned only 79% of what men earned on the dollar and for women of color it’s 63%. Today only 5% of Fortune 500 company CEO’s are female. We still have a long way to go.
From 1776 to 1917 to the 2017 HERstoric Women’s March, we stand on the shoulders of the women – and men – who came before. It was their pleas and protests, marches and parades, arrests and imprisonments, torture and hunger strikes that gave women a voice in the government. So I say to you my fans of women’s history, look forward to celebrating with me the Nineteenth Amendment and honoring all who made it possible.
Above: Women marching in New York City in 1915.
Hundreds of thousands march down Pennsylvania Avenue during the Women’s March in Washington, DC, U.S., January 21, 2017. REUTERS/Bryan Woolston – RTSWR2W
Above: The record setting, HERstoric, peaceful Women ‘s March in 2017.
Above: The Silent Sentinels, who for eighteen months, starting in 1917, silently and peacefully picketed in front of the White House for the right to vote. They were arrested for “obstructing sidewalk traffic,” and thrown into prison where they were tortured.
Above: Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, journalist, civil right Leader and one of the founders of the NAACP. Tragically, she, along with women of color, was not invited to march in Alice Paul’s 1913 Suffrage Parade.
Harriet Tubman (PLEASE see the film “Harriet!”) and Frederick Douglass.
Susan B. Anthony & Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Dolores Huerta: labor leader, civil rights activist and working as you read this for equality.
Thanks to the 2018 midterms, we have an HERstoric number of women in Congress today. Out of the 535 members, 23 women are in the Senate and 87 in the House of Representatives. That’s 20.6 %. One in five. Not good enough. NOT equal. “We need half. That’s all we ask. Half. Half. In the House. In the Senate. At Universal. At Sony. If it were half, I can’t say the world would be better, but it would be representative. “
Meryl Streep
“When I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court] and I say, ‘When there are nine,’ people are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.”
Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
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Summer 2019
Yay! Women’s Equality Day is coming!!! We celebrate Women’s Equality Day every year thanks to the late GREAT Bella Abzug, who in 1971 first introduced legislation to designate August 26th Women’s Equality Day.
We are approaching the anniversary of – as “Battling Bella” bellowed; The Women’s Battle For Equality – when the 19th Amendment was ratified on August 18th and officially adopted and added to the Constitution on August 26th, 1920.
It takes 36 states to ratify an amendment and make it law. Harry Burn was a first time twenty-four year old Tennessee member of The House Of Representatives. His mom sent him a now famous telegram: “Dear Son, Hurray and vote for Suffrage and don’t keep them in doubt….Don’t forget to be a good boy and help Mrs/ Cat with her ‘Rats’. Is she the one that put rat in ratification, Ha! No more from mama this time. With lots of love, Mama.
He did, making history and Tennessee the 36th state to ratify the Amendment. So. WE DID IT! It only took three hundred years…
It “officially” started in July 1848 when Elizabeth Cady Stanton stood up at he first women’s convention in Seneca Falls, New York and blew the room away by asking/demanding to include suffrage – the right to vote – in their Declaration of Sentiments.
But it started way, way, way before. Countless women AND MEN made it happen. And you can count on me to take you on the road to women WINNING the vote.
But, the battle for equality is FAR FROM OVER. Here we are in 2019 and despite the great strides, especially representation in government, women still have great economic inequality.
And tragically, we are going back – back to women not being in control of their bodies.
However, there is much to celebrate. The struggles and triumphs of the women in SHE’S HISTORY! will inspire you. Bring your daughters and especially your sons. Hear their/our voices.
Stay tuned….
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March 2020
We have BIG PLANS in honor of the upcoming 100th anniversary of women winning the vote in 1920 with the passage of The Nineteenth Amendment. We are organizing country-wide staged readings of SHE Is History – the multi-cast all female version of the solo play still in development. Our plan for the entire month of March 2020 is to engage students, fill theaters, have reading groups and create social gatherings to share the reading of SHE Is History. The themes and issues in the play have never been more relevant with the current political, social and cultural environment. If you would like to participate or connect us to anyone please email amysimon@sheshistory.com.
OUT OF THE SHADOWS
2018
“I appreciate a well organized act of civil disobedience,” said Frances McDormand, accepting one of her awards as Best Actress playing very uncivil, disobedient, ass-kicking, justice demanding, grief-stricken mother Mildred Hayes in the film Three Billboards. “I stand in full solidarity with my sisters in black and I also am thrilled that activists all over the world have been inspired… have taken to the streets…”
1858
Lucy Stone was the first woman to be arrested FOR civil disobedience. She wouldn’t pay her property tax. Lucy Stone owned property. If one owned property, one could vote – if one were a man. So she wrote to the tax collector: Sir: Enclosed I return my tax bill, without paying it, my reason for doing so, Women suffer taxation, and yet have no representation, which is not only unjust to one half of the adult population, but is contrary to our theory of government.”
To help her overworked, sick mom, twelve year old Lucy would get up early, “…do the washing for the family of ten or twelve persons, hang out the clothes to dry, walk a mile to school, walk back at noon and bring in the clothes and return for the afternoon session.” *(From Lucy Stone: Pioneer of Woman’s Rights, the book her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell wrote in 1830.) Are you a Lucy Stoner? Read about her here… http://sheshistory.com/site/fabulous-female-fact-lucy-stone/
1917
Alice Paul was arrested many times for civil disobedience, and most famously in 1917 for “Obstructing Sidewalk Traffic” while peacefully, legally, picketing the White House for the right to vote. She learned about civil disobedience from the great Emmeline Pankhurst, the British Suffragette who went around London smashing windows to get attention and win the vote. Brilliant, ballsy, Ivy-league educated, hunger-striking, Nineteenth-Amendment-passing Suffragist Alice Paul wrote the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923.