In a world of Marjorie Taylor Greens be an Alice Paul.
As women’s access to reproduction rights is rapidly diminishing, the lesson that every new generation has to fight for the same rights to protect these rights has never been clearer.
Progress is possible but not guaranteed.
It is no wonder that artists are currently exploring these issues because the fight is far from over.
Vote
Alice Paul the suffragette leader was the main strategist of the final campaign that led to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. She was beaten, jailed, and force fed in pursuit of women’s rights.
So much has changed since the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment granting the right to vote for women over a century ago, and yet we’re reminded sometimes we need to look back, in order to march fearlessly into the future.
The legacy of women’s rights activist, Alice Paul a combative, outspoken leader of the 20th-century woman’s suffrage movement and the author of the ERA is currently being acknowledged in two different creative ventures.
One is an important art show inspired by Paul opening in June in San Francisco. Entitled ACCESS:An Ordinary Notion, it is curated by Karen Gutfreund and Elizabeth Addison and I am honored to be participating in the show.
Simultaneously a major musical called Suffs currently in previews opens on Broadway on April 18. Portraying the blood, sweat, and tears of women’s rights to vote.
Suffs
Cast of Snuffs. Activist Alice Paul is played by Shaina Taub, who also wrote the musical’s book, music and lyrics. She sees this show as a gift to upcoming generations. The shows’ producers include none other than Hillary Clinton and Malala Yousafzai.
In the musical, it is 1913 and the women’s movement is heating up.
Alice Paul is a headstrong, feisty 27-year-old with bold ideas, pitted against Carrie Chapman Catt, 53, a protégé of Susan B. Anthony, the leader of the American woman suffrage movement. American women’s struggle to win the right to vote is entering its seventh decade, with a third generation of dedicated activists trying to convince the nation that “We The People” also includes women. After hundreds of state and local campaigns across the country, little progress has been made.
Paul and her younger generation of suffragists have had enough, challenging Catt’s plan of slow political persuasion.
It is a clash of will, ego, strategy, and vision. Two brilliant women of different generations dedicated to the same cause but convinced of their own methods of achieving equality. Alice Paul broke away from the National American Woman Suffrage Association to form the more radical National Woman’s Party.
Borrowing from her British counterparts, Alice Paul organized parades and pickets in support of suffrage.
Her first—and the largest—was in Washington, DC, on March 3, 1913, the day before President-elect Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. Approximately eight thousand women marched with banners and floats down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House, while a half million spectators watched, supported, and harassed the marchers.
On March 17, Paul and other suffragists met with Wilson, who said it was not yet time for an amendment to the Constitution. On April 7, Paul organized a demonstration and founded the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage to focus specifically on lobbying Congress.
In January 1917, Paul and over 1,000 “Silent Sentinels” began eighteen months of picketing the White House, standing at the gates with such signs as, “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?”
They endured verbal and physical attacks from spectators, which increased after the US entered World War I. She clashed with Woodrow Wilson, who was affronted by Paul’s “unladylike” tactics.
As we entered the war the president stood before the world and made the claim: that the United States merits a leadership role because of its commitment to ideals.
Alice Paul, now the leader of the National Woman’s Party, stood before the president and refused to let him get away with it. She knows that American realities do not match American ideals, and she is determined to keep repeating this inconvenient fact until they do.
Alice Paul worked for political rights and was tortured for it.
Instead of protecting the women’s right to free speech and peaceful assembly, the police arrested them on the flimsy charge of obstructing traffic.
Paul was sentenced to jail for seven months, where she organized a hunger strike in protest. Doctors threatened to send Paul to an insane asylum and force-fed her, while newspaper accounts of her treatment garnered public sympathy and support for suffrage. By 1918, Wilson announced his support for suffrage.
It took two more years for the Senate, House, and the required 36 states to approve the amendment.
ERA
Afterward, Paul and the National Women’s Party focused on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to guarantee women constitutional protection from discrimination writing the first version of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1922. Following World War II, she fought to include gender equality in the charter of the United Nations.
Paul spent her life advocating for this and other women’s issues. The ERA was ratified by 35 states in the 1970s, but by the 1982 deadline was three states short of 38 needed to become a constitutional amendment.
The fight for women’s suffrage is one of the defining civil rights struggles in our history, one that cuts to the heart of what Democracy means: who gets to participate in our government. Yet the debate over women’s suffrage was never just a political argument; it was also a social, cultural, and moral debate about women’s role in society.
That debate is, of course, still ongoing.
A Century Old Fight For Equal Access
It is now 100 years since the introduction of the Equal Rights Amendment.
The exhibition ACCESS: An Ordinary Notion in conjunction with the AlicePaulInstitute is in honor of Alice Paul who re-wrote the amendment in 1943 expanding the language to be more in line with recently passed legislation. Dubbed the ‘Alice Paul Amendment,’ the new amendment stated, ‘Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.’
The 19th Amendment, granting women suffrage, is the only mention of the word ‘woman’ in the U.S. Constitution.
Furthermore, the only right guaranteed to women by federal law is the right to vote.
The ERA has yet to be ratified.
Use your voice.
In a world of Marjorie Taylor Greens be an Alice Paul.
Call For Art Nationally Juried Show
Below is a call for art from the curator of ACCESS: An Ordinary Notion, Karen M. Gutfreund, that I’ve had the pleasure of working with for over a decade on exhibitions. You can see more of her 40+ national exhibitions here: Karen M. Gutfreund Art, Gutfreund Cornett Art (activist art) or on Instagram at @karengutfreundart
“Access: An Ordinary Notion” is directed at women, self-identified women and non-binary artists. Karen is the co-curator/juror and it is from the Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art and will be hosted at Arc Gallery & Studios in San Francisco.
Read on below for more details contact Karen with any questions at kmg.callforart@gmail.com
CALL for ART for “ACCESS” open now, deadline for submission is 4/17/24
Exhibit -Saturday, June 15 -Saturday, July 13, 2024
With ACCESS-An Ordinary Notion, we seek artworks that tell individual stories and advocate for social justice and human rights. We are committed to amplifying various voices and viewpoints as we strive for peace using art as a visual narrative. ACCESS-An Ordinary Notion will showcase art in all media that speak to and illuminate the ongoing conversation around race, women’s and LGBTQIA+ rights, reproductive rights, disparities in global wealth, power, access to food, water, shelter, education, health services, disability access, child and elder care, along with immigration issues, climate change, and criminal (in)justice in the modern world. We are open to, and encouraging, a wide range of interpretations.