’s Moment Essay, Research Paper
A Decade?s Moment
The Cold War ended. The rise of CNN broadcasts. The death of Mother
Teresa. Females enter the Citadell. O.J. Simpson fights the courts on trial. A
woman?s business makes the Fortune 500. The Princess of Wales passed away.
The Gulf War was faght and returned from. Above all of this books were
written, awards were won, and countries declared their independence. Still,
there would be a mistake in saying that this is all that happened seeing as how
two times the poll boths were approached and two times they pasted the vote.
However, never once in these ten years did it ever cross our minds why now
women stand in booths beside men to cast heir vote with equal impact. To tell
why we must look back only a hundred years to 1890, and the Woman?s
Movement. A group entitled The National American Woman Suffrage
Association (NAWSA), stood up to the challenge to get women the right to vote.
They organized, spoke, and won, all to be titled with equality to men.
The NAWSA was formed by the coming together of two separate
ogranizations, the NWSA (National Woman Suffrage Association) and the
AWSA (American Woman Suffrage Association); Susan Anthony and Elizabeth
Stanton, Lucy Stone and Julia Howe. These women came together to from what
will be the largest organization of the time; larger than the Civil Rights
Organizations, the Union Labors, and the Political Activist, all together. With
Anthony as the
forms of protests. They did little sitting, most of the time the women were
marching in the streets or standing in voting lines, local or national. As Alice
Paul once said, ?We are women with legs and voices. We are not fighting to sit
but rather to stand beside a man and cast our vote. (Dubois 826)? It was the
Movement?s path to the polls which was to be the talk for many years, simply
because it was a battle of words without violence. A battle which for many was
won by thousands refusing to move out of the lines to vote, refusing to let things
remain the same as they have been for years just simply because that is the way
of the years. The passing of the Nineteenth Amendment allowed women to now
stand as those people not only egaul to men in the eyes of God but equal in the
sight of law. (Kraditor 67)? ?We are a team of organizers formed from one
strong band; bonded to each other to rise above those who enpail us to became
those who we have only long to become over great time.? This quote by
Marguerite Higgins shows that the organization of women was not lacking but
rather bursting with energy and ready to fight.
?Words are our food, so let us eat.? The women?s movement would be
nothing with out great speakers such as Stanton, Anthony, Gage, Blatch, and
many others, to envoke a feeling of pride, a need for understanding, and the
ultimate desire to risk life and limb for the right to stand egual.