Celebrate women every month

By BOB RAY SANDERS

Think of your mother.

Remember your precious strong, stern, determined, no-nonsense and yet gentle grandmother.

And you men, in particular, also reflect — if you will (and if only for a minute or two) — on your wives, daughters, sisters, nieces, female cousins and women you have trusted and confided in over the years.

As you reflect on those people and their relationship to you, try to think back to 1920.

I know most of you weren’t born then, but try to recall your history lessons from that time.

Some of you historians no doubt will note that it was the year Warren G. Harding, a Republican senator from Ohio, was elected the 29th president of the United States, and the year the League of Nations was established after the end of World War I.

Movie buffs might know that it was the year of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” starring the legendary John Barrymore.

The baseball enthusiasts among us surely will point out that 1920 was the year the great Babe Ruth was sold by the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees for a whopping price of $100,000.

It was the year that would start the decade known as “roaring” before it would end in the “crash” of 1929.

Many females, of course, will know that it was the year the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing women the right to vote.

The 15th Amendment had ensured that the “right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.” But that only included men, and specifically black men because white men had the right to vote.

Long struggle

It would take women — of all races — an additional five decades to be afforded that most basic right of American citizenship. And it would take even longer before women had the right to serve on juries in many states or have the “privilege” to serve in public office in a lot of places throughout this land of the free.

March is Women’s History Month and as I thought about that recently, I realized how little many people know or care about women’s history.

For example, here are a few questions taken from a quiz on the National Women’s History Project Web site:

Who was the first woman to run for president of the United States (1872)?

Who was the first woman Poet Laureate of the United States?

What journalist traveled around the world in 72 days in 1890?

What woman was turned down by 29 medical schools before being accepted as a student, graduated at the head of her class and became the first licensed woman doctor in the U.S.?

Who was the Shoshone Indian woman who served as guide and interpreter on the Lewis and Clark expedition?

Who was the first black woman poet to have her works published?

If you don’t know the answer to at least 50 percent of those questions, you’ve got work to do.

The truth is we all have more work to do because women in this country still have not overcome the vestiges of those long years of discrimination.

While there has been progress in areas of politics, business and education, females in our society continue to bump up against that glass ceiling despite the number of cracks made by people such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the late U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Females, who make up the majority in this country, still have few places in corporate board rooms, executive offices and the halls of Congress.

Inspiration

We’ve all had great women in our lives. They were our mothers, grandmothers, sisters, teachers, local leaders and neighbors — the many who encouraged and inspired us through their words and deeds.

We should celebrate them, not only this month, but every month of the year.

By the way, the answers to the above quiz questions are: Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927); Rita Dove (born 1952); Nellie Bly (1867-1922), real name Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman; Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1920); Sacajawea (c. 1786-1812); and Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784).

X Bob Ray Sanders is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.