It has taken me a year to come to grips with my sadness over the women’s suffrage centennial. Like Ellen Goodman and Lyn Scherr, I expected “confetti and cocktails, triumphant gatherings of women and men. White pantsuits and a red rose. A national shout-out to three generations of [brilliant, visionary, heroic] suffrage leaders.” But the …
Why Was the 19th Amendment Centennial Such a Disappointment? Read More »
On that beautiful day when the women’s suffrage amendment was finally ratified, Alice Paul boldly declared, “August 26 will be remembered as one of the great days in the history of the women of the world and in the history of this republic.” Unfortunately, time has proven Alice Paul wrong. On August 26, 2015, the …
Why Was Media Coverage of Women’s Equality Day So Absolutely Awful? Read More »
Another Mother’s Day has passed. We heard that same ole paeans to motherhood from right wingers and the same ole reflections about mothers’ frustrations from progressives. In articles that haven’t changed much since Anne Crittenden penned her classic, The Price of Motherhood fourteen years ago, we saw appalling statistics about mothers, children and poverty. We …
1848 was a year of revolution in the Western world. Numerous European countries revolted against royalism and class oppression. The Communist Manifesto was published. Irish immigration to America skyrocketed as The Potato Famine ravaged the beautiful island. And Thaddeus Stevens, the outspoken, uncompromising abolitionist, was elected to Congress. But nothing was a revolutionary as what …