The United States has never had a female president.
Then again, 101 years ago women were not allowed to vote.
As the nation celebrates the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment — women’s suffrage was ratified in 1920 — the Westport Library joins in. A year-long series of events looks back on that then-controversial decision.
They’ll also examine the current voting landscape. A century after half the country finally joined participatory democracy, our country grapples with issues like voter suppression, and the security of our ballots.
The library’s programs are part of its first-ever year-long WestportREADS initiative. Formerly a one-month event, it’s now expanded into a full campaign: “Westport Suffragists — Our Neighbors, Our Crusaders.”
More than a year ago, Westporters Lucy Johnson and Marcia Falk asked director Bill Harmer if the library could note the upcoming 19th Amendment anniversary.
He embraced the idea, and suggested it fall under the WestportREADS umbrella. The program encourages the entire community to read the same book, and organizes events around that theme.
Last fall’s kickoff featured journalist Elaine Weiss. She discussed her book “The Woman’s Hour,” a riveting account of the far-harder-than-it-should-have-been political and social drive to pass the amendment.
The next book event focuses on fiction. On Tuesday, March 3 (7 p.m.), Kate Walbert welcomes Women’s History Month with a discussion of “A Short History of Women.”
Her novel explores the ripples of the suffrage movement through one family, starting in 1914 at the deathbed of suffragist Dorothy Townsend. It follows her daughter, watches her niece choose a more conventional path, and completes the family portrait with a great-granddaughter in post-9/11 Manhattan.
The battle for suffrage was long and hard.
But that’s only part of the WestportREADS schedule.
Here are just a few other events:
- The League of Women Voters tells its story (February 9, 1:30 p.m., Westport Woman’s Club)
- “Battle of the Sexes” video, about the groundbreaking tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs (February 18, 2 p.m., Westport Library Komansky Room)
- Opening reception for an exhibit on Westport women central to the suffrage movement (March 6, 6 p.m., Westport Library Sheffer Room)
- Talk about Lillian Wald, social activist and founder of the Henry Street Settlement who retired to Westport (March 18, 7 p.m., Westport Library Forum).
Lillian Wald: social justice warrior, and Westporter.
Authors, historians and journalists will present other panels and exhibits through August. That month — marking final ratification of the 19th Amendment (you go, Tennessee!) — WestportREADS sponsors a final, big program. Details will be announced soon.
Working on this project has been enlightening, Johnson says.
“The fight for suffrage began long before the 20th century,” she notes. “It took a long time. But without television, the internet or social media — through sheer will and determination, with marches and lobbying, state by state — people got it done. It was an amazing feat.”
The library has partnered with the League of Women Voters. Representatives will be at every event, to enroll new voters.
All women are encouraged to register.
All men, too.
(For more information on the “Westport Suffragists” WestportREADS program, click here.)
If every leader, of every country in the world, were female, I doubt there would ever be another war.
Puhleeze
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this is heavy sarcasm since, you know … Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir, for starters.
Piffle. For a sample: Cleopatra; Isabella of Spain; Elizabeth I; Catherine the Great; Victoria; Indira Gandhi; Golda Meir; Margaret Thatcher.
Right…but would you call those women “war starters” or “war finishers”???
Eye of the beholder perhaps.
It appears (your) “diaper changing” thoughts are up for debate…
“it shouldn’t be too surprising that female rulers throughout history haven’t been more peaceful than men”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2017/05/02/women-wont-save-us-from-violence/
and…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4454964/Female-rulers-27-likely-wage-WAR-males.html
Why?
You are assuming my thoughts based on what now?
You didn’t read my words….I didn’t do the research and I didn’t write the articles. You assumed my thoughts based on others words.
And I didn’t assume you used the words “changing diapers” and “misogyny”…. those were actually your words.
It shouldn’t be this difficult, but for some reason with you, it always is…
Name a woman that started a war.
Gosh this is puerile.
Isabella of Castile shoved aside her brother’s daughter to assume the throne, and prosecuted a war against Portugal to defend her title. She made war on the Islamic realm of Granada, expelling the Moslems from Iberia, and likewise expelled the Jews in the same year, 1492.
Mary Tudor made war on her own people, burning at the stake nearly 300 Protestants.
Elizabeth I, like her half-sister, made war on her own people, and had her chief rival for the throne, also a woman, beheaded. She fought wars in the Netherlands and France.
Jadwiga of Poland made war on Galicia.
Catherine the Great made war on Turkey and the Crimea, and partitioned Poland.
It’s difficult to count the wars waged by Victoria, but there were several in India and Africa, leading to her ruling the largest empire the world has ever known.
Between 1950 and 2004, just 48 national leaders across 188 countries, fewer than 4% of all leaders have been female. The sample is too small to draw a definitive conclusion. However, with that said, there are hotspots in the world that are ongoing. (Remember I said start a war.)
Take note- no females have commented. They don’t start “wars.”
Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and pot belly and think they’re sexy!
I am a Westporter from the period, 1949-1968 (Staples ’64) and am very pleased to see the Westport Reads program celebrating the centennial of women’s suffrage. I’ve been working on an online resource that may be of interest to participants in this program. I am editing a crowdsourced database with biographical sketches of 3,500 grassroots supporters of woman suffrage. Please share with your participants, THE ONLINE BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES, located online at https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/VOTESforWOMEN.
Thanks for sharing word of this project.
Tom Dublin