Greetings!
My grandparents, who raised me, were born in 1911 a month apart. Women wouldn’t get the right to vote until the 19th Amendment was ratified on August 18th, 1920. At that time, my grandparents were 9 years old. The 26th Amendment giving everyone from the age of 18 years old & up the right to vote was ratified on July 1, 1971. At that time, I was 12 years old. I remember having a discussion with my grandmother about this event because I was not far off from 18 & was excited to be able to vote. I also remember it so well because of what she told me: that when she was not much younger than me, women were not allowed to vote.
I was dumbfounded. I almost didn’t believe her. I assume now that surely this stage of history must have been taught to me in school by that point but it must have felt long ago & in the distant past. My grandmother, however, was not long ago & in the distant past. Even now, I consider my grandmother to be in the here & now, the present time. To think that when she was a kid, women could not vote seems ludicrous, outrageous, offensive. When you look at a timeline, it was over 100 years ago so it seems to be in the distant past but it isn’t actually. The woman who raised me remembers a time in her lifetime, when women could not vote, were not allowed to vote & were deemed unequal to the menfolk of the time. That is not in the distant past & what this means for us is that those attitudes still exist in our culture. They have not been bred out, for not enough generations have passed in the interim.
I hope you will go out & vote today if you are 18 & older, regardless of your gender, religion, nonreligion, color, culture or country of origin so long as you are an American citizen now, please vote. Go register to vote even though it will probably be too late to vote in this election, you will be able to vote in the future. Democracy works because we are allowed to vote. Exercise that right. I feel like every time I vote, I am honoring all of the women who came before me. This is what I wrote in my Gratitude Journal this morning:
“I am grateful for the right to vote. My grandmother’s generation & the generations of women before her fought hard for this right & privilege & I am grateful to them. I honor them & their sacrifice & hard work every time I vote. May God Bless all of the women who came before me & made my life possible. Amen.”
Love in the Light of God, Dawn