Abigail Adams wrote to her husband President John Adams in 1776 the following, “As you write the new constitution, remember the ladies.” Unfortunately, President Adams forgot the women. It took more than 100 years, around 1920, when women decided to improve their status quo and fought for voting rights.
It began in 1848 with Ms. Stanton and Mott in the Seneca Falls Convention to start the idea of women’s rights by producing a Declaration of Sentiments which emphasized that the all men and women are created equal and therefore both should have the right to vote. Your Status Quo is your Status Quo as long as you agree to it. At that time, women could not own property, had no legal claim to any money they might earn, and no right to vote. It is not a movement if everyone is just sitting, so they started demanding their right by protesting in the streets and learned to unlearn the status quo. They raised public awareness and joined forces with Susan B Anthony and the Suffrage movement, finally passing the 19th Amendment to the constitution. That was the first step of a thousand-mile journey. To improve is to change, but to be perfect is to have changed often, and that happened again in 1943 with WWII as women participated in the war effort. “Rosie the Riveter was the second wave of feminism, which changed and learned to unlearn the status quo for all the girls around the world. From cannot change to “We Can Do It”. To be perfect, you need to change again, and it happened again in the 1960s with the Women Liberation Movement and the Equal Rights Amendment. As we see, progress did not happen through legislation or the judiciary system; rather, it happened by protesting and demanding the desired changes. The court’s will ought not to be affected by the weather of the day, but rather by the climate of the era and then judiciary system also needs to change with the changing of the times.
The same thing happened in race relations and the civil rights movement. The Emancipation Proclamation happened in 1865, but not in practice until more than 100 years later. It was only in the law books with no power. The famous case of Brown vs Board of education in 1956 which was Won in the court, a Victory without a Victory. Victory to talk about but no Victory to show. Just because you lost a hundred years before you started is no reason not to try to win. Then people demanded and learned to unlearn the status quo again and the civil rights movement started in 1965, ten years after the law demanding integration. People noticed that, there is no CHANGE without Movement, and as long as you are sitting, nothing will be done. They needed to protest and ask for changes and demand it.
NO Changes happened without a price as history has shown us in the womens’ movement and the civil rights movement. We the people should protect the right of the country to change, and change only happens when you protest and demand it on the streets. The election of 2016 was an aberration in American History and only brought chaos, division, hatred, and bigotry. YOU can RIGHT this WRONG. ACT now and be part of History. Make rather than leave history to be read. Let’s be the voice to the voiceless individuals who want change. It is time to take Action rather than keep our silence, not only on women’s rights, civil rights, but about Human rights. Let’s change the hypocrisy to democracy by Voting, the privilege many women suffered for more than 100 years to achieve. Our voices should get louder and louder as the wind of change is blowing and the breeze of freedom is in the air.