~a column by Colleen O’Brien
After a fight of nearly three-quarters of a century that started in 1848, women in this country were awarded the vote. The 19th Amendment, Women’s Suffrage – ”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” – passed both houses of Congress on June 14, 1919. It was sent out to the states for ratification, and on August 18, 1920, a hundred years ago this week, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, making it law: 26 million American women suddenly were deemed smart enough to vote for their president.
The above became a right for the women of America; barriers were erected in some states against Native, African, Asian and Hispanic women of America.
There is more to this colossal fight for women (white) to become as equal as men (in 1920, black and white men, not Native). After a required 36 states ratified the 19th, it took several of the rest of the states a long time to ferret out its lack of lurking dangers and vote for it:
- Maryland 1941
- Virginia 1952
- Florida 1969
- South Carolina and Georgia 1970
- Louisiana 1970
- North Carolina 1971
- Mississippi 1984 . . . is when the Mississippi legislature voted to ratify the 19th Amendment, acknowledging that women had been fully enfranchised citizens for 64 years.
So, here we are in 2020, with another presidential election looming. Running on the Democratic ticket for vice-president of the U.S. is a woman. Not for the first time do we have a woman running for high office: Marietta Stow in 1884 ran for VP; Charlotte Bass was the first Black women, in 1952, to run for VP. Kamala Harris, of Jamaican and Indian heritage, is today’s female vice-presidential candidate, alongside Joe Biden. She is not an outlier, she is just another woman among a dozen or so in history running to represent the whole country. Maybe this time, it will happen.
Harris is fully qualified in age, citizenship, education, experience. And political persuasions aside, women can acknowledge pride in the accomplishment of a woman. Our slighting of females in this country is a sport that includes calling them names, complaining about their voices, their hair, their ankles. It is not only wearying to women to be second-class citizens but a huge disadvantage to our country. When more than half the population is dismissed in one way or another so as not to be proportionally represented, the country suffers. Any woman of any party running for office and getting elected closes the gap in representation.
When we vote for change in this presidential election, we will do in-person early voting or we will wait in line to vote in person on Election Day; we can vote by mail as early as our state allows. (A state by state listing can be Googled under “Early Voting by State.”)
Before we get to perform this critical duty as citizens, a niggling obligation arises: it is to speak up when we hear someone demeaning a woman by calling her names: “nasty” is being bandied about to describe Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris. What precisely does it mean to call a woman “nasty”? Fear of her intelligence, strength, capability, work ethic, integrity? Her electability? I’m pretty sick of the habitual demeaning, and the only way to stop it is to address it again and again until it withers.
Even a little decency goes a long way; lack of it shows a man for what he is while it belittles the whole country, not just in the world view but in our own estimation of ourselves. It took us a long time to get the vote; how much longer before we get the respect?
