“We will kneel in, we will sit in until we can eat in any corner in the United States. We will walk until … we can take our children to any school in the United States. And we will … lie in until every Negro in America can vote.” Daisy Bates, civil rights activist, president of Arkansas NAACP, 1963
November 5th
I was awake by 3:00 AM on the dot. I could say that the time change was wrecking my life, but there was something more. So instead of punching the pillow like I normally did, I decided to sit in the awakening. I soon realized that I was experiencing heightened nerves and for a great reason. I would be voting for the first time in a United States election. For years I sat on the sidelines educating and encouraging citizens to vote, while simultaneously lamenting over those who chose to vote, for whatever reason, with their silence. The previous presidential election was over by the time I was sworn in as an American citizen, but now I could exercise a right that I did not have as a Green Card holder. Better yet, I could finally join my children and my sister in voting, giving our mom another reason to be proud.
My Excitement!
Alastair Campbell, a British writer, communicator and strategist, was a guest on MSNBC “Morning Joe Live with Joe Scarborough.” In the segment called “Is America ready for a Madam President?” which aired November 4th, Campbell spoke on deeper issues like “how little foreign policy is actually part of the debate.” Speaking of the consequential man former President Donald Trump had become, Campbell stated this simple yet profound amphiboly:
“Once the abnormal is normalized you can’t get it back.”
“Once the abnormal is normalized you can’t get it back.”
My Heart Dropped
My heart dropped, yet, I could flip this statement to unveil a message of hope for today, especially for women, black people, and all minorities! However, I first had to navigate through some of the historical barbed wire Black men and white women erected with the intention of keeping Black women in the shadows and dense fog of silence. Dr. Megan Bailey writes in Between Two Worlds: Black Women and the Fight for Voting Rights:
“During the 19th and 20th centuries, Black women played an active role in the struggle for universal suffrage. They participated in political meetings and organized political societies. African American women attended political conventions at their local churches where they planned strategies to gain the right to vote….But in spite of their hard work, many people didn’t listen to them. Black men and white women usually led civil rights organizations and set the agenda. They often excluded Black women from their organizations and activities.”
Incapable of Independent Thought?
Women were deemed unfit and unable to vote. Architects of the Constitution and many who followed in their footsteps believed that women were “childlike and incapable of independent thought.” While researching the Women’s Suffrage Movement I came across information about the anti-suffrage group National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NAOWS). Unfortunately the idea of sabotaging women’s advancement is not new. Kelly Valen, author of The Twisted Sisterhood: Unraveling the Dark Legacy of Female Friendships wrote “Girls can be mean to other girls, but it is adult women who vie to destroy each other.”
The Great News
The great news is that those dark moments did not overshadow the illuminating events that laid the path to normalizing women’s rights. As a matter of fact the passing of the 19th
Amendment to the US Constitution was the unraveling and ultimate disbandment of NAOWS.
The journey to the 19th Amendment and beyond was a long and at times violent one. Black women especially had to fight in this movement with additional weights around their ankles, and necks. Those weights were sex and race. Here are a few moments which stood out to me where women, especially Black and Indigenous women, left their mark in the fight for equality.
- 1847 (Seneca Falls, New York) – At the First Women’s Rights Convention, 68 women and 32 men signed a Declaration of Sentiments. It was a model of the Declaration of Independence.
- 1849 (Worcester, Massachusetts) – The First National Women’s Rights Convention takes place. In attendance were former slaves and abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth (also a Women’s Rights Activist).
- May 29, 1851 (Akron, Ohio) – At a women’s rights convention, former slave, abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth, delivered what historians have cited as her most famous speech. She asserted her right to equality, both as a woman and Black American.
- 1873 – Minor v. Happersett. The Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment did not guarantee women the right to vote, citizenship does not give women voting rights, and women’s political rights are under individual states’ jurisdictions.
- July 21, 1896 (Washington, D.C.) – The National Association of Colored Women (NACW) is formed. Founders and leaders include Harriet Tubman, Helen Appo Cook, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, Mary Church Terrell, and Anna Julia Cooper. It was later renamed National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC).
- 1909 – Mary Church Terrell, daughter of former slaves and was counted as one of the founders and charter members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
- 1913 – Former slave, prominent journalist, activist, and researcher, and anti-lynching crusader, Ida B. Wells founded the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago in 1913.
- 1920 – The 19th Amendment to the Constitution is certified as law.
- 1935 – Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator and political advisor, formed the National Council of Negro Women with the purpose of pursuing civil rights.
- Let us not neglect to mention American Indian women such as Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa), fought for citizenship in order for them to be able to vote.
A World with an Unbroken Glass Ceiling
Have you ever thought about what world we would be living in today if Sojourner Truth did not have the courage to speak her truth? What if the Supreme Court ruling in Minor v. Happersett was accepted as a lost cause? Where do you think women of color would be if Harriet Tubman, Helen Appo Cook, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, Mary Church Terrell, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells, Mary McLeod Bethune, Rosa Parks, Dr. Prathia Laura Ann Hall, Shirley Anita Chisholm, Dr. Maya Angelou, Wangari Maathai, Vernice Armour, Dr. Hyveth Williams, Condoleezza Rice, Dr. Gina Marcia Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, Kamala Harris, the 49th, first female, and current Vice President of the United States, the matriarchs in our lineage, and every other black woman who came before us, laid down their thoughts, voices, writing, music, artistry, advocacy, and faith in the dream that we have great value in this world? What would our milestones look like if, as I believe God’s timing would have it, that Kamala Harris’ campaign launched almost to the exact number of the year anniversary of Women’s Suffrage. Women’s suffrage, August 1920-2024 (104 years). The Harris Campaign, July 23, 2024-November 5, 2024 (105 days). Pause and think for a moment. I thought about it and I have my doubts that without those glass ceilings broken, you may not have been able to read this article today.
Biblical Change Agents
The books of Numbers chapters 27, 36 and Joshua 17:3-6, tells a story of five women whose self-advocacy won them a judgment from God amending the land structure and laws of inheritance for women in Old Testament Israel and beyond. Land allotment and inheritance was only available to male heads of tribes and clans, of which the five sisters were excluded. Their father Zelophehad was dead and they had no male siblings to claim the inheritance. As a matter of fact, in official ceremonies as such, the women and children stood on the outskirts of the male gathering, diminishing in the shadows of silence.
Agitators of Justice
Standing in the poverty quicksand of a non-heritable legacy, the sisters leaned on the heart of God and trusted in His justice and equality. They knew their worth was more than money or land. They knew that God honored His covenants and the loyalty of His children. Unified in their convictions, they came out from the shadows, went to Moses with their grievances and asked for mercy and justice. What happened next was a glimpse of what change can look like when men and women fight for the abnormality of inclusivity, equality, and equity to be normalized. Moses brought their case before the Lord and He handed down a verdict in their favor.
“The daughters of Zelophehad are correct. Give them land along with their uncles; give them the property that would have been given to their father if he had lived.” Numbers 27:5-7 (NIV)
Male Allies
As time went by, nullification of that judgment through marriage into another tribe threatened their future. But, again, thanks to brave men willing to advocate for women’s God-given rights, God added a contract addendum to the original amendment which covered any other possible threat.
“Every daughter who inherits land in any Israelite tribe must marry someone in her father’s tribal clan, so that every Israelite will possess the inheritance of his fathers. 9 No inheritance may pass from tribe to tribe, for each Israelite tribe is to keep the land it inherits” (Numbers 36:8-9).
These brave women’s names should be seared in our minds. Their names were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, Tirzah, collectively called The B’not Zelophehad – “the daughters who came out of the shadows.”
Life Lessons
One take-away from the revisiting of The Women’s Suffrage Movement and the Biblical account of Zelophehad’s daughters, goes back to my new favorite, history changing amphiboly, “Once the abnormal is normalized you can’t get it back.” If we seize the pregnant moment when the issue has reached full term, delivery of a new and better normal is imminent. Their legacy leaves for us a master class in the power of faith-filled self-advocacy and equality. Without it we will not have the ability or love, to see each other as equal.
“Faith in Christ Jesus is what makes each of you equal with each other, whether you are a Jew or a Greek, a slave or a free person, a man or a woman.”(Galatians 3:28, CEV).
The Kingdom Mandate
The lens of God, His covenant for us ratified by the death of self-righteousness through Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection offers us the ability to normalize the abnormal. The justice of God, fuels us with the courage to emerge out of the shadows of the fear from injustice, oppression, bigotry, racism, sexism, misogyny, and suppression.
Normalize the Abnormal
In a world where justice, rights, and freedom are still abnormal, through Jesus, we can be free from being slaves to the debilitating fear of change. Instead of hiding, we can be free to flow in the rivers of God’s righteousness and justice, Amos 5:21-24, NIV:
“I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”
