Find
me on Facebook and visit my website, http://www.bfoswaldauthor.com. Thank you.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment