Heroes--Challenges and Opportunities

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Year of Anniversaries

2020--Have you noticed that there are some momentous anniversaries this year?  The Mayflower landed at Plymouth in 1620--400 years ago!  Do you have Mayflower ancestors?  Are you planning to attend any Mayflower celebrations?

A bit closer to present day is the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment--Women's Suffrage.  Did you have an ancestor involved with that struggle for equality?

There are many other anniversaries this year--75 years from the end of World War II, 40 years after the eruption of Mt. St. Helens,  You can probably name many more and please do!

Do you have a hero, of either gender, someone you admire for his or her contribution to an eventful struggle? Or did an event impact you or your family?  Here is a challenge and an opportunity to honor a person or relate an event--write a paragraph or two and submit it here for publication.

Here is an example of my hero connected to the Women's Suffrage Movement and the 19th Amendment:  Excerpts are from History, Art & Archives, United States House of Representatives
January 10, 2018 blog.

Women's Suffrage

Jeannette Rankin
Library of Congress
Online Catalog (1,097,897)

"It was no accident—nor mere symbolism—that on January 10, 1918, a woman led the effort on the floor of the U.S. House to pass the landmark resolution for a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote. The first such proposal had been introduced in Congress almost 50 years earlier, but it was Jeannette Rankin, the first woman to serve on Capitol Hill, who steadily built support in the House for women's voting rights throughout the 65th Congress (1917–1919)."1  

Born in Montana 1880, Jeannette Rankin was the first woman in the US House of Representatives, elected in 1916 to represent the State of Montana, four years before passage of the 19th Amendment.  At that point 41 states had granted women's suffrage but national elections were not yet included.  President Woodrow Wilson felt the issue was best left to states to address.  The night before the suffrage legislation was to begin debate in the House, he announced his support for the amendment as "an act of right and justice" and a "war measure."

January 10, 1918, when the suffrage debate began, people arrived early to get a seat in the House Gallery.  Many were women who came prepared for a long debate by bringing their lunches and knitting materials.

The measure was presented by Rep. John E. Raker, California Democrat.
As Raker approached a lectern to open debate, Massachusetts Republican Joseph Walsh, a suffrage opponent, suddenly asked, “Would it interfere seriously with your plans if you were to let Miss Rankin open the debate?” Raker immediately yielded to Rankin.
She began by invoking American women leaders of note: Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Clara Barton, Mary Livermore, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frances Willard, Lucy Stone, Jane Addams, and others—“all have asked the Government to permit women to serve more effectively the national welfare.” Noting that this issue now came up in time of war, Rankin asked that women be given the chance to serve their nation. “As never before the Nation needs its women—needs the work of their hands and their hearts and their minds,” she said. 
To those who believed the issue should be left to the states, she had a simple message. “We mobilized and equipped our Army not State by State but through Congress,” she reminded them. “Shall our women, our home defense, be our only fighters in the struggle for democracy who shall be denied Federal action?” In the war for democracy, everyone was committed—not just those men at the front but the farmer growing crops, the seamstress making uniforms, and the miner extracting copper from deep underground.
She concluded her remarks to sustained applause. “Can we afford to allow these men and women to doubt for a single instant the sincerity of our protestations of democracy? How shall we answer their challenge, gentlemen; how shall we explain to them the meaning of democracy if the same Congress that voted for war to make the world safe for democracy refuses to give this small measure of democracy to the women of our country?”2
You can read the complete blog at the following link.
  https://history.house.gov/Blog/2018/January/1-10-Suffrage-Committee/ 

Rep. Rankin voted against U S entry into WWI and in December, 1941 she voted against U S entry into WWII.  She has the distinction of being the only representative to vote against entry for both wars.

In the early 1960s  Jeanette Rankin spoke at a student assembly that I attended at Rocky Mountain College, Billings, Montana.  I don't remember what she said, only that I was impressed by her.

Challenge!

So, accept this challenge; take this opportunity and



     Write
     Write
      Write


Submit your paragraphs to blog editor.  Please use a word processing program and include small file copyright-free pictures if possible.  Check for images at the Library of Congress: loc.gov  if necessary.

Is your story only one paragraph long?  No problem, we can publish more than one at a time.

MaryLynn Strickland

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