Key Women’s Groups Honor 19th Amendment's 100th Anniversary

With the successful Broadway hit of Hamilton the recipe to weave profound words of American’s founding leaders into dramatic storytelling with modern expressions attracts the youngest voting generation to listen and join in. Unfortunately, the pandemic has temporarily closed off Broadway.

Along with active local college campus programs that enhance self-empowerment centered on our victories in civil rights, the performing arts can magically transport the greater public back to critical timelines in history that are now given a breath of life after being been trapped in a library's archives for few to view.

The League of Women Voters of Sussex Highlands and the Sussex County Branch of American Association of University Women comprise decades of strong advocates that secure a woman’s right to vote. They have been involved in the passage of equitable state and national legislation representing the rural voting women of Sussex and parts of Warren County which also includes local school board elections. In a turbulent environment of party politics, they rise above by setting policy of board members’ activities with limitations that preserves their nonpartisan status as a 501 c3.

As a regional coalition of members, they joined up on a statewide invitation the LWV, AAUW and T Thomas Fortune Cultural Center sponsored as a Zoom Theater Event in place of an in-Person show.

We will certainly look back at 2020 as an extraordinary year. This year also happens to be the 100th Anniversary of the Passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. Before COVID-19, this milestone would have brought a commemoration of live auditorium venues. Ardent historians in the League of Women Voters and the American Association of University Women in Monmouth County wrote the original script. They have been past partners in researching women’s voting history to create engaging storytelling of women’s roles in history. They have covered most of NJ’s Leagues and Branches in our region with history presentations often from a unique perspective. This script was entitled Suffragist Speak: The Fierce and Flawed Battle for the vote. Before the performance, an easy donation button was available so virtual attendees could support them by credit card.

This team managed to overcome the pandemic business hurdles placed before them and had a successful original show and a successful fund-raising event for the landmark date of August 18th.

The 3 partnered groups researched personal notes, journals, letters and newspaper headlines of these iconic legends of the 19th Amendment. However, now they also needed to be skilled in adapting this into new synchronized streaming webinar technology where each individual could act their part from their own remote location but appear connected with the other actors. They managed to do both - bringing to life the engagement of a great script combined with a seamless zoom presentation.

Their objective was to capture the covered tensions of these times. As genuine living history interpreters, they recreated a conversation between Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass that revealed the strain on their friendship following the passage of the 15th Amendment. The 15th Amendment granted African-American men the right to vote into the U.S. Constitution in 1870 but did not include women. The acting of Frederick Douglas was provided by the T Thomas Fortune Cultural Center.

Acted out were the words of Carrie Chapman Catt, Alice Paul, and Ida B. Wells. The final acted segment were the words of Fannie Lou Hamer’s 1964 account of racially motivated voter suppression. This is close history where many people are still alive today to tell and this makes it real for African American women and men -the fight for the vote is not over.

The script gave time to discover Ida B Wells. The brave contending life of Ida B. Wells deserves being placed front and center in American history. Her activism began in 1884, when she refused to give up her train car seat, leading to a successful lawsuit against the train company. She took part in the first suffragist parade in Washington, D.C., in 1913, which was organized by the National American Woman Suffrage Association, as the sole Black woman in the Illinois delegation. Wells marched with this group despite being asked at the last moment to move to the back of the procession with the segregated contingent.

Motivated in part by racism within the women’s suffrage movement, she went on to found and co-found a variety of civil rights organizations.

Today we face a general election with wide political division which is encapsulated in a time of natural upheavals. It too offers some incredibly unique times with a motion for change towards a more virtuous direction that parallels the turbulence of 100 years ago. In the 21st Century we have the advantage to add the tools of internet technology to gain a victory and all women are starting to use them.

Check out and join up on these COVID-19 unstoppable events organized by the New Jersey’s LVW and NJ AAUW to get out the vote.