Progressive Anniversary

Filed in National by on August 26, 2009

Today marks the 89th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment being made part of the US Constitution.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

We should pause for a moment today to remember all of the known and non-known heroic liberals and progressives who made this amendment possible.

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  1. Maria Evans says:

    Yes, hooray for women like Susan B. Anthony, who blazed the trail for women to get the vote by getting arrested in 1872 for casting a ballot in the Presidential race. A straight Republican ticket, incidentally.

  2. cassandra_m says:

    In the midst of the current effort to reform health insurance, it is also worth remember just what these liberals and progressives live through to get to that amendment — marched, went to jail, were brutalized, made fun of, sang, lobbied and just never forgot that the promise of the rights listed in the Constitution belonged to them too.

    Anything worth having is worth fighting for.

  3. The women who came before me are my heroes. There were many trailblazing suffragettes, plus all those unsung heroes that just quietly went about doing their business and made the world a better place.

  4. Joanne Christian says:

    And the State of Utah for allowing women the first right to vote!!!! And most likely a strong Republican ticket.

  5. nemski says:

    JC, Utah women got the right to vote in hopes that they would outlaw polygamy.

    ME, yes, the Republicans use to be a Progressive party, but for you to vaguely infer that they are today is just foolish.

  6. It was actually Wyoming in 1869 (although it was a territory at the time).

    Here’s the history. I guess it was actually ratified on August 18, 1920 when Tennessee adopted the amendment and it was certified on August 26, 1920.

    Seriously, though, why isn’t this a national holiday?

  7. liberalgeek says:

    Never forget the valiant women who wore their weapons to their suffragette meetings.

    On another note, is suffragette a derogatory term now, like waitress or stewardess?

  8. nemski says:

    UI asks Seriously, though, why isn’t this a national holiday?

    One word – penises.

  9. Maria Evans says:

    nemski I didn’t “vaguely infer” anything. I stated a fact, Susan B. Anthony was arrested in 1872 for voting and she voted a straight republican ticket.

  10. lg – suffragette is not a derogatory term. That is what they called themselves.

    However, nowadays the modification of words with -ette is looked down upon by many.

  11. Maria,

    Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting, not for voting Republican.

    On November 18, 1872, Anthony was arrested by a U.S. Deputy Marshal for voting illegally in the 1872 Presidential Election two weeks earlier. She had written to Stanton on the night of the election that she had “positively voted the Republican ticket – straight…”. She was tried and convicted seven months later, despite the stirring and eloquent presentation of her arguments that the recently adopted Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” the privileges of citizenship, and which contained no gender qualification, gave women the constitutional right to vote in federal elections. The sentence was a fine, but not imprisonment; and true to her word in court, she never paid the penalty for the rest of her life. The trial gave Anthony the opportunity to spread her arguments to a wider audience than ever before.[9]

  12. anoni says:

    Thanks nemski,
    I laughed outloud.

    no post on the DL is complete without a reference to male genetalia.

  13. nemski says:

    Ah, you laugh, but I am dead serious.

  14. liberalgeek says:

    More Republican voter fraud…

  15. D.C. says:

    Let’s not forget the 18th Amendment! That too was a massive victory for progressives! Luckily the American people came to their senses…much like they have regarding healthcare.

  16. h. says:

    I think Nemski used to be a woman.

  17. Maria Evans says:

    Now, UI, where do I say she was arrested for voting republican?

    “Yes, hooray for women like Susan B. Anthony, who blazed the trail for women to get the vote by getting arrested in 1872 for casting a ballot in the Presidential race. A straight Republican ticket, incidentally.”

    “nemski I didn’t “vaguely infer” anything. I stated a fact, Susan B. Anthony was arrested in 1872 for voting and she voted a straight republican ticket.”

    It seems that I don’t says that at all.

    As for your history lesson, thanks, but I’ve been a Susan B. Anthony fan since I was a little girl and I was a Women’s Studies student at the U of D in the 1980’s, so you can put down the Wiki page.

  18. You’re right Maria, I misread your comment.

    Thank you for the insult though.

  19. The reason I put the wikipedia link in is so that people can read for themselves.

  20. anonone says:

    I read someplace that when college women were asked “do you supported women’s suffrage,” most said no. I thought that was funny.

  21. I think what you’re talking about is when The Man Show (on Comedy Central some years back) recruited some woman (English wasn’t her first language) to go around with a petition to “end women’s suffrage.” She got some people (including women) to sign it. It was obvious that the people didn’t know what the phrase meant and thought it referred to suffering. One woman knew and told the woman with the petition who was quite upset at being duped.

    I’m not sure if there was another attempt on a college campus or not.

  22. Von Cracker says:

    Yea women!

  23. anonone says:

    I think that was it, UI. I couldn’t find a link.

  24. The suffragists hoped that Delaware would be the 36th and final state to ratify the suffrage amendment. That didn’t happen. You can read the details in http://www.HerStoryScrapbook.com which is a compilation of links to over 900 articles, editorials, and letters from The New York Times archive about the women who were fighting for, and against, suffrage. The details about Delaware begin at the end of March 1920. In early June 1920, Delaware became the seventh state, and the first Republican state, to reject the suffrage amendment.

  25. Now be honest here and include the words “I’d like to thank the Republican party for making the Nineteenth Amendment a part of the Constitution over the objections of the Democrats — just like they did the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.”

  26. nemski says:

    RwR, if the today’s Republican Party was like it was back then, I’d be a member of it. It’s the ideology that has changed.

  27. Delaware Dem says:

    Agree Nemski. If Lincoln and TR were alive today, they’d be Democrats.

  28. Exactly, nemski. It wasn’t the Dems that undertook the Southern Strategy and thus switched the ideologies of the GOP and Dems. I can’t imagine either Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt would classify themselves as GOPers these days seeing what the current crop of religio-fascist nutbags the party is producing of late. Not saying they’d be Dems, either. Just definitely not GOP.

  29. Delaware Dem says:

    Well, I dunno, Mike. There is a quote of Lincoln’s I saw recently that I cannot find now, but it was one that embraced an activist government, and I could not help but think that if he said it today, he’d be called a socialist.

  30. I think the Civil Rights Act just finalized the switch. It had been coming. Harry Truman integrated the armed forces and former Kentucky governor “Happy” Chandler (my distant relative!) integrated baseball.

  31. Well, I was never much into speaking in ABSOLUTES, hehe…so, I wouldn’t want to say he’d ABSOLUTELY be a Democrat. I just know for damn sure there’s ABSOLUTELY no way an Abraham Lincoln today would be caught dead in the present-day GOP.

  32. nemski says:

    You know what, Lincoln might be a member of today’s GOP — after all, there are the rumors that he was a closet homosexual.

  33. As I said on another thread on another topic: “Oh my…”

  34. nemski says:

    MM . . . yeah, well . . .

  35. But oddly enough, it was the GOP that most strongly backed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, not the Democrats.

    Face it, the GOP has been and remains the real party of civil rights, while the Democrats are mere poseurs.

  36. anonone says:

    Lincoln was, unfortunately, a racist (as were many in his day).

  37. …which occured before the Southern Strategy, if I recall correctly.

  38. RWR, please point to something that the GOP has done for civil rights that isn’t more than 40 years old.

  39. They can’t, UI, because to do so would be to ignore the fact that there WAS an ideological shift between Dems and Repubs 40 years ago.

    We all know the Republicans were the party of civil rights….50-150 years ago. But there was a shift when Nixon and others sought to engage disenchanted Southern Democrats (some of whom had fled for the Dixiecrats) who, like many of the birthers today, were pissed and wanted their “country back” from the “coloreds” who never posed any threat to them or their virginal white daughters.

    The Republicans have been playing to that base ever since and I think it’s reached a head since Obama’s been elected.

  40. Actually, the GOP has never stopped being the party of civil rights. Instead, the Democrats adopted a hyper-support for the concept, one which distorted the true meaning of the term into something that would have been unrecognizable to the Framers, those who passed the post-Civil War amendments, and most of those who supported the seminal civil rights legislation of the 1960s.

  41. “Actually, the GOP has never stopped being the party of civil rights. ”

    Maybe you should tell that to the people screaming they want their “country back!” Which is, essentially, code for “The negro is ruining our country!”

  42. Yes, all those 50+-year-old white Southern men calling Sonia Sotomayor a racist really cemented their reputation as the party of civil rights.

  43. RWR is correct. The GOP controlled the Senate during both voting rights extension and the entire Congress during the last one. The GOP backed the CA Civil Rights Initiative which banned discrimination in college admissions. I know some think that it is okay to discriminate if done the right way, but most Asians, many Latinos, and 1/4 of African Americans supported the Initiative.

    George W. Bush did what Clinton gave lip service to and ended the racial profiling of blacks and Latinos by federal law enforcement. He also insisted that inner city children get the eduction they deserve. He also gave Choice in Schools to parent who lived in dangerous areas of D. C. The program was more popular there than Cash for Clunkers. The GOP also helped make public housing safer and expanded housing vouchers.

  44. Actually, Mike, I’d argue that your interpretation of that comment is evidence of your own deep-seated racism projected upon your political opponents. Virtually every criticism and insult directed at Obama was directed at George W. Bush during his presidency — but these magically have been transformed into racism due to the coming to power of the false messiah. The only way that you and your political confreres can justify calling such comments racist today is if you admit that such racism is what YOU would mean if you used those insults.

    As for Sotomayor — if there were ever a nominee who said he believed that the judgment of a white man would be superior to the judgment of a minority of any gender, he would be justifiably driven from public life. The “50+-year-old white Southern men” were merely applying the same standard to Sotomayor — judging her based upon the content of her character rather than the color of her skin or origin of her family.

    Ad mit it — in your own racism you hold minorities to a lower standard than you do whites, and which then allows you to psychologically justify calling those who hold minorities to the same standard “racists”.

  45. RwR,

    Your attempts to psycho-analyze my comments are ridiculous at best and completely offensive at worst. Get over it. Stop wrapping your bullshit arguments up in these pseudo-intellectual didacticisms. How about addressing the “We want our country back” comments by the Crazy Eileens of the CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN movement? What the FUCK does that mean? WHAT…DOES…IT…MEAN?!? Country back FROM WHAT?!?!? Sorry, RwR, I’m not the only one who can decode the coded language.

  46. By the way, if you knew me, you’d realize that I am not the type to jump on the “screaming-racism” boat whenever someone says something negative about either Obama or Sotomayor. I have gone after the race-baiters on the left for their ostentatious displays just as I’ve gone after those on the right.

  47. Dominique says:

    ugh…after all this time i come back to this site only to find that people who don’t agree with obama’s policy of bankrupting our nation while simultaneously encouraging complacency equates to racism. that attack is so fucking old, tired and unimaginative.

    is it possible that maybe, just maybe, when someone says they want their country back it could possibly, just possibly, mean that they want to take it back from a government riddled with corrupt politicians and driven by special interests? is there even a sliver of a chance that they don’t mean that they want to take it back from the black man in the oval office? i mean, honestly. is it possible to take issue with a black man’s political beliefs and policies simply because we think those beliefs and policies are bad for the country? or do we have to agree with him simply because he’s black in order to avoid being called racist?

    i expect that shit from a lowbrow like donviti or someone with a boulder on her shoulder like cassandra, but i expect more from you, mike.

  48. It means that we want our country to return to the values of limited government and maximized limited freedom that our nation’s Constitution envisions.

    And Mike — I stand by my analysis of why you and others leap to racism every time Obama is criticized.

  49. Dominique,

    Perhaps you’re reading too far into my comments. As I suppose RwR is. I am not complaining about the people who are making legitimate claims regarding Obama’s tripling of the deficit. I am not calling them racist. But these podunk Crazy Eileens who couldn’t give you a CORRECT definition of socialism if their life depended on it and instead spout out phrases like “We want our country back,” yes, sorry, I’m calling them what I think they very likely are: Racists who want their country “back” from the Black man that “stole” it from them. I really don’t think it’s that much of a stretch.

    And, RwR, again, you get it all wrong. As I said in a previous post, I do NOT leap to the racism argument “every time Obama is criticized.” I only leap to it when the people doing the criticizing (read: Crazy Eileen) has been pegged as a lunatic by even our most right-wing downstate talk-radio hosts. I also only use the “racist” tag when I apply it to the dozen or so white people I HAVE heard refer to Obama in less that kind terminology. That’s it. That’s all. So your bullshit analysis really needs to stop right there.

  50. Geezer says:

    “It means that we want our country to return to the values of limited government and maximized limited freedom that our nation’s Constitution envisions.”

    Yes, I want this, too. I want to start with disbanding our standing army; it’s clear the framers didn’t want one.

  51. G Rex says:

    You know, that guy who turned up outside a rally in Arizona with an AR 15 slung over his shoulder was…wait for it…black?

    That’s why MSNBC only showed him from the neck down. That way they could spin the whole “White men are angry!” bullcrap.

  52. “You know, that guy who turned up outside a rally in Arizona with an AR 15 slung over his shoulder was…wait for it…black?”

    I don’t ever remember characterizing the gun-toters as nutjobs, so I see no reason to characterize this guy as one, either. It didn’t bother me.

  53. Von Cracker says:

    So is Alan Keyes. But hey who gives a shit anyway, they’re just two black dudes with some effed-up ideas.

    I saw that guy’s face on MSNBC plenty of times, so I have no clue of what you’re blabbering about, G.

    So what other stuff can you make up in order to defend the indefensible?

  54. There were at least 12 guys at the AZ townhall with guns, 2 with AR15s. One of them was black. They were associated with a group that had been connected with domestic terrorism in the 90s.

  55. nemski says:

    This “black man with a gun” is a great talking point for conservative cretins. Remember when Gates got arrested, there was “a black policeman at the scene.”