YOU may be the ONE!

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After almost fifty-years of struggle and suffering by women (supported by a few men) that was marked by verbal and physical abuse, imprisonment, hunger strikes, forced feedings, being stripped of clothing and publicly humiliated, family sacrifices, lost jobs, and other public indignities, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was finally ratified granting American women the right to vote in national elections. A right that I bet most if not all of the women reading this now take for granted. But did you know:

            On January 10, 1918 the House of Representatives approved the newly introduced Nineteenth Amendment by ONE vote.

            On February 10, 1918 the Nineteenth Amendment failed to pass the United States Senate by ONE vote.

            On August 18, 1920 the legislators of the State of Tennessee became the thirty-sixth and final state necessary to ratify this amendment—by ONE vote.

The story behind this one vote bears telling. The young congress man who cast the final yes vote, the one vote necessary to ratify, was ill at home on the morning the Tennessee House was to consider ratification. His mother physically forced him to get up, dressed, and accompanied him  to Nashville, threatening that if he did not vote for ratification, she would make his life miserable for as long as she lived. Thus ONE woman was responsible for your right to vote ladies.

Of course the young congressman's vote was not all that necessary, other states soon ratified the amendment, one of them would have probably been the necessary thirty-sixth state. The important point to ponder here is that a woman, an uneducated housewife from the Tennessee backcountry, felt strongly enough about women's suffrage to make sure her son voted for it. The moral: Don't for one moment think that your ONE vote will not be important.

Today, many of women's hard-earned rights are being threatened by the most anti-woman Congress to sit in Washington, DC since 1919—reproductive and health care programs are continually under attack, equal pay measures fail, financial help for women in poverty has been decreased or cut altogether, Conservative talking heads, even of their own gender, continually vilify women under the protection of the First Amendment, and this is only a very short list. These attacks are not from just the Federal government but also from state and local governments as well. Be aware women, make your ONE vote count in your favor in the elections of 2014 and 2016.