Well done, Sister Suffragette

When I watched "Mary Poppins" for the first time I didn't really know what Mrs. Banks was singing about when she marched around the living room with her reluctant maids.

Cast off the shackles of yesterday!
Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!
Our daughters' daughters will adore us
And they'll sign in grateful chorus
"Well done, Sister Suffragette!"

I became a little more educated about the fight for women's rights when I did a report on Susan B. Anthony in the fifth grade.  I learned all about women's suffrage and the movement that started in Seneca Falls, New York.

As this is election day, I like to remind myself of the struggles women endured in order to earn their right to vote.  I stumbled on these facts today and I would like to remind you as well. 

1. Many early suffrage supporters, including Susan B. Anthony, remained single because, in the early 1800s, married women could not own property in their own right and could not make legal contracts on their own behalf.

2. In the early 1800s, in most states, women could not have custody of their own children. According to state laws, children "belonged" to the husband. Not until the 1840s, when women began to organize to obtain legal rights and gradually laws began to change, could women own property in their own right after marriage, or obtain custody of their own children.

3. American women who were jailed for demonstrating for the right to vote were force-fed in prison when they went on hunger strikes.

4. Alice Paul, leader of the National Woman's Party, was put in solitary confinement in the mental ward of the prison as a way to "break" her will and to undermine her credibility with the public.

5. The nineteenth amendment to the Constitution granting women the vote was passed by only one vote. Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the Amendment, and it passed the legislature when Harry Burn, a young legislator, changed his vote to "yes" after receiving a letter from his mother telling him to "do the right thing."

My morning started with a flat tire that blew on the way to work.  We are currently driving on the donut and I also think we need new brakes.  It's freezing cold out and I have other errands to run.  Somehow these things don't seem so important now.  My trivial problems pale in comparison to the things these women went through for the simple right to cast their vote.  Well done indeed.