Category: Women in the news

Dorothea Lange—Picturing America during Difficult Years

Adele Fasick2 Comments

People alive today are no doubt the most photographed generation that has ever lived. Cell phones record our daily life and let us see what is going on in the rest of the world. We are accustomed to seeing people splashing through floods in India, scratching for food in drought-stricken fields in Africa and enduring bombings in Europe.  But documenting news through photographs is a fairly recent development. We owe the richness of our visual lives to a handful of photographers whose work made photography a vital source of information in the modern world. One of the influential women in this field was Dorothea Lange, a documentary photographer who introduced thousands of Americans to the sight of the landscape of our country and the people who live and work in it.

Born in 1895 in Hoboken, New Jersey, Dorothea Lange grew up in New York and its suburbs observing and living with people in the city. As a child she suffered a bout of polio that left her with one crippled leg. She always felt self-conscious about that, but she did not let it hinder her activities. While still a teenager, she made up her mind to be a photographer even before ever owning a camera. After graduating from high school, she travelled to California with a friend and settled in San Francisco. There she got a job in a photography studio and within a few years became a successful portrait photographer. In 1920 she married the painter Maynard Dixon with whom she had two sons.

Dorothea Lange

For ten years or more she and her husband lived busy social and professional lives. They became part of the progressive artistic life of San Francisco and knew many painters and journalists. Dixon loved painting scenes of the rural areas of California and Arizona, so the couple spent a great deal of time traveling in the Southwest. Unfortunately, when the 1920s ended with a financial crash, the market for photographic portraits and for paintings almost disappeared

Both Lange and her husband were ardent supporters of Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal policies of providing help for workers, including artists. For a decade starting in the early 1930s, Lange worked for the Farm Security Administration taking pictures and writing reports about conditions throughout the western and southern states. When the dust storms of the mid-thirties pushed thousands of people from their barren fields in Oklahoma and other Southern states out to California, Lange took some of her most famous pictures, including the iconic “Migrant Mother.”

As World War II started, the United States began to force Japanese American families who lived in Western states into internment camps. Lange proposed a project of documenting this move through photographs. She also interviewed people as they were being moved into the camps and documented their difficult lives. Most of her pictures of camp life, however, were impounded by the government and did not become available until after the war. They can be seen now in the National Archives and at the Bancroft Library of the University of California.

“Migrant Mother” one of Lange’s most iconic photos of the Depression

Dorothea Lange’s life and work continued for twenty years after the end of WWII. For those who are interested in her life and achievements, Linda Gordon has written an absorbing biography. Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits (2009). Gordon not only makes Lange and her personal live come alive, she also paints a picture of California during the first half of the twentieth century. Reading about Lange’s life, we learn about how farming developed in the West and about the variety of Californians—Indigenous people, Latinos, and Easterners fleeing the Depression. Lange’s life was lived at a turning point for the country and her pictures help us understand how important those years were. You can find  the book, Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, at most public libraries.  

The Climate Is Changing and So Must We—Fiona Hill’s vision

Adele Fasick1 Comment

At the Glasgow Climate Conference this past week, world leaders signed an agreement to cut back on the use of coal and other fossil fuels. Mining, manufacturing and even farming have been revolutionized over the past fifty years and more mines and factories will close as a result of these international agreements. Jobs that used to be central to every modern economy are disappearing. We know that jobs must change, the question is, how can we help people to change so that they can find security in the new economy.

Few people have been able to observe the effects of changing economies on the lives of everyday people as closely as Fiona Hill, the author of There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century.

Fiona Hill

Hill was born in 1965 and grew up in County Durham in Northern England in a community that had been devastated by the closure of coal mines during the decades following the second World War. Although Hill’s family had been miners for generations, both her father and mother were hospital workers during most of the years when they were raising their children. The title of Hill’s book, There Is Nothing for You Here, comes from the advice given to Fiona and her sister as their parents realized that education was the key to moving ahead in the modern world.

During the 1980s when Hill was growing up, education was easier to obtain in England than in the United States or in many other countries. Government support enabled children to move from local council (public) schools to university. Publicly funded stipends meant that poverty was not an insurmountable obstacle for many students, but Hill clearly shows the obstacles that stood in the way of young people who wanted to move ahead. Expenses that were ignored by the government, such as the insufficient supply of books in local libraries and schools, the cost of transportation to cities where scholarship tests were available, and the prejudice shown against students who did not fit into the middle-class mold of most university applicants made entry into the university system very difficult. Hill describes her interview for entry into Oxford as one of the worst experiences of her life.

Despite all the difficulties of moving ahead, Hill managed to acquire a university education at St. Andrew’s where she found mentors who helped her find opportunities for further study. Later, she was able to attend Harvard and earn a PhD. She also spent time in Russia where she could observe the results of the post-cold war economic turmoil on the lives of Russian students. This varied background has given her a wide range of experience about the ways in which different countries are meeting the challenges brought by changing economies.

When Hill moved to the United States, eventually becoming an American citizen, and marrying an American, she observed many similarities between the way working class families coped with change in the two countries. The American Midwest, where her husband grew up, faced the loss of manufacturing jobs just as County Durham had. Towns in the Rust Belt of the Midwest were experiencing the same difficult adjustments as towns in the UK, except that class differences in America are complicated by racial differences which also affect people’s education and job training.

There Is Nothing for You Here is a dense book, filled with the stories of various individuals who are adjusting to a new world. Hill became an expert in National Security and relations with Russia and worked in the White House during the early years of the Trump Administration. She became well known after she gave testimony during Trump’s First Impeachment Trial where the focus was on relations between the United States and Russia. Now she has given us a broader picture of growing up in a changing world. Her book raises questions about how countries can help individuals find a path to changing their lives.

While leaders sign proclamations and declare goals, Fiona Hill reminds us that it is individuals who will bear the brunt of fitting into the new world. There Is Nothing for You Here points the way to some of the changes that are needed.     

Pointing the way toward a new world—Shirley Chisholm

Adele Fasick1 Comment

Like most Americans, I spent the early days of this past week worrying. Would there be violence at the Inauguration? Would armed intruders try to disrupt the ceremony?  It wasn’t until after President Biden was safely sworn in that I was able to take a long, peaceful breath.

Although the ceremony was held the midst of a pandemic, as well as in the aftermath of an unprecedented assault on the U. S. Capitol, everything went well. The in-person audience was small, but the virtual audience was huge. History was made and a new team entered the White House. Life is returning to normal.

Now I’ve had a few days to savor the feeling of having a Vice President who is the first woman, the first Black person, and the first Indian American to hold that office. It is time for us to rejoice and to pay homage to some of the pioneers who paved the way for that innovation.

Kamela Harris

I am not alone in celebrating the foremothers who provided models for Kamala Harris. Many women at the Inauguration ceremony wore purple, a color that has become associated with women in government. And, according to the New York Times, Representative Barbara Lee of California wore a pearl necklace which once belonged to Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman who was a serious candidate for the presidency.

In 1968, Shirley Chisholm made history by becoming the first Black woman to be elected to Congress. Once there, she made her mark by refusing to be quiet and follow the dictates of politicians in her party. She fought to serve her constituents by supporting bills to provide federal funds for childcare facilities, and she opposed the Vietnam War writing “Unless we start to fight and defeat the enemies in our own country, poverty and racism, and make our talk of equality and opportunity ring true, we are exposed in the eyes of the world as hypocrites when we talk about making people free.”

When she was unable to change the focus of the country through legislation, Shirley Chisholm decided to run for President. Her 1972 campaign was not taken seriously by political leaders. She spent very little money on the campaign and was not able to hire strong staff for her efforts. The country was not ready for an African American president and especially not for one who was a woman. Despite her failure to gain support for her nomination, (Senator George McGovern became the Democratic candidate.) Chisholm continued to be an active member of Congress until 1982 when she retired.

Shirley Chisholm continues to be an inspiration to Kamala Harris and all the other women who are moving into public office in the country. Because of her strength and courage America’s government has become more representative of all the people of the country. This week is a good time to remember and honor her.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg–A Fallen Warrior

Adele Fasick7 Comments

The news of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s death Friday night was a shock to a country that has been absorbing shocks all year. I saw the announcement late in the afternoon as I turned on my email. No sooner had I read the headline than the phone rang as a friend called to ask whether I had heard the news. For the next hour, messages by phone and email came in from friends and relatives the news spread. Many of my friends and relatives felt the loss as a personal grief.

A crowd gathered outside the Supreme Court building in Washington within hours of the announcement, and as the word spread across the country, another crowd of mourners gathered in San Francisco, probably in other cities too. On the weekend crowds in cities across the country gathered to march in a tribute to the Supreme Court Justice who was affectionately known as RBG.

Why has her death resonated with so many people while other justices have died in office without attracting much notice from the general public? The biggest reason is probably that Justice Ginsburg was a warrior in the long fight for equality for women—a struggle that has been part of American history for at least a hundred years

When the upper-class gentlemen who wrote our constitution started their work, Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams who was one of the authors, reminded her husband “Don’t forget the ladies”. But the men did forget them. More than a century passed before women won the vote, and even after they could vote, women—half the population—were still not considered capable of being leaders in government or business. Ruth Bader Ginsberg, like many other women, recognized this injustice. But unlike most women, Ginsberg did something about it.

Ginsberg’s reputation was built on her presentation of a number of cases documenting gender-related discrimination. The media of the past few days has shown the methodical way she went about winning case after case by showing that such discrimination was contrary to the spirit and letter of the Constitution. She never did win the final battle to get an Equal Rights Amendment added to the Constitution, but she supported the effort.

And Ginsberg not only fought for the rights of women, she also supported a series of interpretations of the Constitution that protected voting rights throughout the country. She opposed the Citizens United decision that enables corporations to give unlimited amounts of money to political groups. Throughout her long career she supported the view that all citizens should have equal rights and that the country should not be dominated by an elite group of wealthy people and corporations who bought their way into power.

Justice Ginsberg’s strong voice will be missed on the Court and throughout the country. As Sir Walter Scott wrote many generations ago, a beloved leader has been taken from us and our mourning will be long and painful.

He is gone on the mountain,
He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain,
When our need was the sorest.
The font reappearing
From the raindrops shall borrow;
But to us comes no cheering,
To Duncan no morrow!

Are men mature enough to handle presidential debates?

Adele Fasick3 Comments

Almost all of the news comments on the Democrats’ debates held this past week mentioned that for the first time women were a prominent part of the lineup. Ever since Samuel Johnson made his famous quip about women preaching in public, “Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all” women have had to prove themselves worthy of speaking out in public settings.

After all, it was more than a century after the establishment of the United States that a woman was first elected to Congress. That was Jeannette Rankin, who was elected from Montana in 1913. Rankin had become a public figure by her work in the women’s suffrage movement. Before running for Congress, she had been the first woman to speak before the Montana state legislature. There she urged that women should be allowed to vote. She succeeded in getting the vote for Montana women and moved on to fight for a national vote on suffrage.

Jeannette Rankin

Women had been fighting for the right to vote since 1848 and it was through the struggle to win that right that many women became accustomed to speaking in public and making their voices heard. They had many years of struggle, because it wasn’t until 1920 that the Women’s Suffrage amendment was finally ratified.

Women have served in Congress now for more than 100 years, but their move into power positions has been very slow. It’s hard to believe that in 1984, it was considered daring for the Democrats to nominate Geraldine Ferraro as their vice-presidential candidate. She was the first woman to appear in national debates before the election and her appearance was a welcome change for many voters, although of course, her team did not win the presidency.

Last week’s debates, however, showed a distinct change in the power structure of the debates. Many of the male candidates thought their best way to win attention (and potentially votes) was to interrupt as often as possible and take over the argument. But on Thursday night they were put in their place by Kamela Harris who had one of the most-quoted lines of the debate, “The American people don’t want to watch a food fight. They want us to put food on the table.” And a few minutes later she made a stinging attack on Joe Biden—no one interrupted her then.

And Harris wasn’t the only woman who raised the level of the debates. Elizabeth Warren, during the first debate, stuck to her points and talked substance instead of yelling and interrupting. And we can’t forget Amy Klobucher who quietly mentioned that the three women on the debate stage had far longer records than the men in fighting for reproductive rights for all women.

There is no question that women today are ready to speak out about national policies. Perhaps the more relevant question today is: are men ready to engage with them on a level that will benefit all of us?

Women on the Money-Harriet Tubman

Adele Fasick1 Comment

Four years ago I wrote a blog post about the initiative being undertaken by the Treasury Department to update the twenty dollar bill by replacing the picture of Andrew Jackson with a woman—the first woman to be honored on a major currency in America. The United States has lagged behind the rest of the world in having women pictured on currency. Dead white men have monopolized U.S. currency ever since the country began issuing money. But now we have a chance to move into the 21st century. Let’s not lose it.

After several years of work on the project, The Treasury Department came up with a plan to design a new twenty dollar bill the most commonly used paper currency—the one that comes out of the ATM each time we go to our bank to replenish our supply of cash.

The new design features Harriet Tubman, a 19th century activist who helped many Americans escape from slavery and begin their journey to freedom. The plan was to release the new bill in 2020, the one hundredth anniversary of the passing of the suffrage amendment that gave women the right to vote. 

Suddenly last month, the New York Times reported that Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of the Treasury, announced “the design of the note would be delayed for technical reasons by six years and might not include the former slave and abolitionist”. Further reporting, however, soon revealed that planning for release of the bill was well underway. No convincing reasons have been put forth for delaying the release for another seven years.

Reactions from Congress came quickly. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat from New Hampshire, introduced the Harriet Tubman Tribute Act of 2019, which would compel the Treasury Department to print $20 bills with Tubman’s likeness as soon as 2021.

Perhaps the only way to get Washington to move ahead with its project is for all of us to weigh in on the decision. Andrew Jackson has had his day. It is time for the country to recognize a woman who rescued scores of people from slavery, served as a spy for the Union during the Civil War, and devoted her life to making the lives of others better.

You can help by letting your Senators know you support Senator Shaheen’s bill. Perhaps it would also be a good idea to contact the Treasury Department and let Secretary Mnuchin know Americans are watching and hoping that the promise made to release the new bill in 2020 will be kept.

Women–Doing Not Saying

Adele Fasick1 Comment

 In her speech to the Harvard University graduating class this week, Angela Merkel urged a cautious optimism: “I experienced firsthand how nothing has to stay the way it is,” she said. “This experience, dear graduates, is the first thought I wish to share with you: Anything that seems set in stone or inalterable can indeed change.”

She went on to list some of the problems the youthful graduates might want to change: “Protectionism and trade conflicts jeopardize free international trade and thus the very foundations of our prosperity,” she said. “Wars and terrorism lead to displacement and forced migration. Climate change poses a threat to our planet’s natural resources.”

Angela Markel’s common sense optimism, as well as her acknowledgement of the difficulties facing the world today grow out of her life experience. Born in 1954, she was raised in East Germany during the difficult years when the Soviets controlled that nation. In university she studied science and did not engage in public life. It wasn’t until the fall of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany that she was drawn to political life. Few people would have predicted she would become a leader. But, improbable or not, this quiet woman made her way past the bombastic male leaders of the party and eventually emerged as the leader.

Since becoming Chancellor of Germany in 2005, Merkel has been acknowledged as the leader of the European Union. She weathered the immigration crisis of 2015, encouraging Europeans to accept the humanitarian necessity of helping Syrian refugees to find a place in European society.

Now Europe is facing continuing turmoil as one country after another reveals a strain of populism that rejects immigrants and wants to turn the clock back. Merkel has said that she will leave politics in 2021 and allow someone else to negotiate the future. But her contribution to building a united Europe will not be forgotten. As historians look back on the first decades of the 21st century, I am certain she will be recognized as the outstanding political leader of our times.

Angela Merkel is not the only woman leader who is leaving the limelight. Theresa May, Prime Minister of Great Britain, is also stepping down. May took on the onerous task of working out a Brexit plan to move Britain out of the European Union. After the referendum in which voters chose by a narrow margin to leave, several of the noisy male supporters of the move stepped back and chose not to handle the mess they had created.

Theresa May

Theresa May was the only political leader willing to take on the hard work of actually coming up with a plan. She came up with a number of plans, but, unsurprisingly, someone found fault with each one. The fact that she did not succeed in finding a magic formula that would suit everyone was almost inevitable.

When Theresa May stepped down, the media talked about her a failure. Perhaps they should wait to see whether any of her critics comes up with a foolproof plan that will be accepted by all sides. No one has shown any sign of doing that yet. I can’t wait to see whether any of the guys who have been jeering from the sidelines will step up and hit a home run now that they are on their own.

It is time for us to honor the courageous women who have not just talked but have taken on some of the world’s most serious problems. As Margaret Thatcher once said: If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.

Celebrate Women’s History Month with Hillary Clinton

Adele Fasick4 Comments

As we celebrate Women’s History Month, we should note that more women are serving in Congress now than have ever served before. And a majority of the candidates for the 2020 presidential election are women. This week one of the people most responsible for this revolutionary change is leaving the active political scene. Hilary Clinton has announced that she will not be a candidate for president in 2020. It’s about time we recognized all that she has done to make the changes in our political life possible.

Women in Congress

There have been other women candidates for President over the years. The notorious Victoria Woodhull ran for president as long ago as 1872, but no other woman has opened the door for a female president as wide as Hillary Clinton has. She has been opening doors for women now for more than a generation.

How many of us remember when Clinton became first lady in 1993? She took over the role of the previous First Lady, Barbara Bush, and the contrast was sharp. Barbara Bush followed the typical path of women who grew up in the early twentieth century. She dropped out of Smith College to marry George H.W. Bush and to follow her husband around the country while he served in the military and went on to his career. When she became First Lady in 1989, she promised that she would be a “traditional” First Lady.

Hillary Clinton followed a different path. She completed her college degree at Wellesley College and went on to Yale law school. Like Barbara Bush, she met her future husband while she was a student, but she chose not to interrupt her education. She and Bill Clinton moved to Arkansas, but after they married, she continued to use her maiden name. Her decision to keep that name was unusual at the time and apparently caused some dispute with both her mother and her mother-in-law, but Hillary was already forging a path that would be followed by many other women in years to come.

Hillary Clinton

The public career of Hillary Clinton is too well-known to need retelling. She served as First Lady in her husband’s administration and later as Senator from New York. She became Secretary of State in the Obama administration and travelled to more countries than any Secretary of State had done previously. During all of her assignments, her life was made more difficult because she was a woman. Often the comments were just plain silly. These ranged from complaints about her remark as First Lady that she didn’t stay home and bake cookies, to criticism of the pants suits she often wore. She was a true pioneer and the choices she made no doubt seemed threatening to some conservatives at the time, but no one today would give them a second thought. 

During the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton got more votes than the man who became president, but because of our complicated Electoral College system, those votes were not enough to win the office. We will never know how much the 2016 race was influenced by the reluctance of many men, and some women, to vote for a woman for president.

Hillary Clinton’s long service to her country in many capacities has paved the way for the more equitable Congress that we now have and for the number of women who are willing to run for office. Surely we all owe her a vote of thanks for that. 

We owe her more than a vote of thanks. The next government building that is built in Washington D.C. should be named for Hillary Clinton. She deserves the tribute for changing the role of women in our government and ushering in a new era of gender equality in politics. Let’s put this on the agenda. What a wonderful way to celebrate Women’s History Month!

Shirley Temple and me and tanks in the street

Adele Fasick3 Comments

The audience that laughed and cried with Shirley Temple as she starred in movies like Captain January, Poor Little Rich Girl, and Heidi during the 1930s and 1940s has pretty much disappeared. Some of us still remember the TV shows she hosted during the 1950s and 60s, but her movies and the songs she made famous like “On the Good Ship Lollipop” seem relics from a forgotten past. Nonetheless her name and image are still remembered as an indelible part of America’s past.

Like many other people, I had a vague idea that Shirley Temple had maintained a long career after her retirement from films. Recently, however, I had a vivid reminder of Shirley Temple’s career when I read Norman Eisen’s book The Last Palace (2018). The palace of the title is a magnificent home designed and built in Prague during the 1920s by Otto Petschek, a Jewish entrepreneur whose fortune was made through coal mining. The Petschek family was driven from the country when Hitler came to power and Czechoslovakia fell to the Nazis.

Eisen has built his book around telling the story of the palace and its occupants throughout the century. Each chapter tells an intriguing story but the one that surprised me the most was that of Shirley Temple Black, who was ambassador to Czechoslovakia during the late 1980s. She had first visited Prague and the palace in 1968, after she had retired from the movies. The purpose of her visit was to encourage the country to join the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies. She succeeded in her mission, but was unexpectedly caught up in a coup. On the morning that she had planned to leave the city and return home, she looked out of her hotel window and saw tanks crowded with Soviet troops rolling down the streets. Suddenly all of her plans were cancelled. Tanks have a way of doing that.

Reading this chapter of the book reminded me vividly of my trip to a library conference in Moscow in 1991. I dug out the old journal I had kept during that trip to find my description of how the sudden eruption of the August coup had seemed to me and my colleagues.

Last night was scary. After we went to bed at 11:00, we heard tanks rumbling through the streets. They really make a racket ‑‑a loud roar that sounds almost like a low‑flying aircraft. Then we heard gunfire, first pistols then machine gun fire. Not much of it, but enough to make us listen. We kept peering out the window and trying to see what was going on. We could see the tanks, but could not see where the shooting was. There were lights all over the city. In the hotel across the street we could see people silhouetted in windows. I began to realize how people must feel in Beirut where no one knows what is happening.

The noises stopped at about 1:30 and we finally got some sleep. This morning at breakfast rumors were flying. Some people can see down the street to the Yeltsin office building. Some said that there were crowds out on Kalinnen Prospekt yelling “Yeltsin” “Yeltsin” and that the tanks turned back when they came upon the crowd. There is some hope that the fact that the tanks refused to fire means that the junta is going under. Some reports on the radio say that two junta members are “ill”. CNN doesn’t go on the air until 9:00, so there has been no outside news.

The memory of those tanks and the insecurity of not knowing what was going on and not being able to get in touch with people back home is still clear in my mind, Eventually the coup failed, Moscow was safe and soon we were able to return home and go on with our lives.

U.S Embassey in Prague

Shirley Temple’s coup adventure lasted longer than mine and had a far different ending. After days of confusion and conflicting news, many foreigners were finally able to leave Prague and Shirley played an heroic real life part in the drama. With the help of people from the U.S. State Department, she led a caravan of autos to the German border where they were able to escape from the Soviet’s takeover of Czechoslovakia. The events had a great impact on her and she spent most of the rest of her life in public service, working as White House Chief of Protocol, and eventually becoming an ambassador to Ghana and then to Czechoslovakia in 1989. She returned to Prague and lived in the palace, which is now the American embassy. As ambassador, she was able to welcome a more liberal government as it took power. She demonstrated both good judgment and star power in encouraging the Velvet Revolution that brought democracy to Czechoslovakia.

Eisen has chosen well in focusing on one building that saw the unfolding of so many historical trends during the 20th century. It is a welcome reminder of how history unfolds and how events in other countries impact American life. I strongly urge you to read it. Not only will you learn a lot of history, but you will also enjoy suspenseful stories about some amazing people.  

Congresswomen’s Profiles in Courage

Adele Fasick6 Comments

As the new members of Congress were sworn into office this week, much attention was paid to the fact that more women than ever before are now serving in Congress. The youngest member, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, otherwise known as AOC, was probably the most talked about, especially after a video of her dancing while she was an undergraduate was posted online. Although the video was apparently posted to make her seem frivolous, most viewers seemed to find it charming.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

When Ocasio-Cortez, or AOC, described herself as a socialist, conservatives again started attacking her. And when she suggested that a marginal tax rate of 70% might be appropriate for very high incomes, some commentators were outraged even though the rate she suggested is no higher than the one the U.S. tax code imposed during and after World War II.

The people who write political commentary seem to have very short memories. The fact is that American Congresswomen have often favored more radical solutions than their male colleagues supported. And they have stood by their positions even when put under severe pressure.  

When Jeannette Rankin took her seat in 1917, she made almost as much of a splash as this year’s women did. As the first woman ever elected to Congress, she joined with more than 50 other members who voted against President Wilson’s request to enter World War I, even though the measure passed with an overwhelming majority.

Jeannette Rankin

After the war was over, President Wilson declared that it had been fought to make the world safe for democracy. But Rankin turned his words against him when she fought hard for a national measure to give women throughout the country the right to vote. “How shall we explain to them [American women] the meaning of democracy if the same Congress that voted to make the world safe for democracy refuses to give this small measure of democracy to the women of our country?” she asked. Women finally got the vote in 1920

Rankin left Congress but continued to be an activist for many years. In 1940 she was re-elected to a House seat and arrived there in time to be confronted with the Pearl Harbor attack. This time there were fewer members of Congress who opposed President Roosevelt’s request for a declaration of war against Japan. When she voted against the motion she was hissed and she was never again elected to public office.

Some Americans, however, recognized Rankin’s courage. Wikipedia describes the reaction of the noted editor William Allen White:

 Probably a hundred men in Congress would have liked to do what she did. Not one of them had the courage to do it. The Gazette entirely disagrees with the wisdom of her position. But Lord, it was a brave thing! And its bravery someway discounted its folly. When, in a hundred years from now, courage, sheer courage based upon moral indignation is celebrated in this country, the name of Jeannette Rankin, who stood firm in folly for her faith, will be written in monumental bronze, not for what she did, but for the way she did it.

In recent years other Congresswomen have demonstrated rare courage in standing up for their beliefs. After the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and Washington D.C., Congresswoman Barbara Lee was the only representative to vote against the Authorization for Use of Military Force—the act that gives the president sweeping powers to attack any country at any time if he or she believes it threatens the safety of the United States or supports terrorism. That act passed 420-1 with Lee the only representative who voted against it. In the years since 2001, many people have come to believe that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and much of the Middle East that were justified under this act have done irreparable damage to America, but at the time, Barbara Lee was the only Congressperson who recognized the danger.

Barbara Lee

Anyone who has forgotten the tangled emotions and arguments that followed 9/11 (and that includes most of us) should read the article in the Atlantic that tells the story of both the attacks and support Barbara Lee received following her vote. But, through the years, Lee has held firmly to her beliefs and is still serving in Congress representing her district in Oakland, California.   

It is easy to see that the women now entering Congress are following the footsteps of some determined and courageous women. Let’s hope they can live up to the courage of their past leaders.