“Ar’n’t I a woman?” Sojourner Truth was an uneducated African American abolitionist and a women’s right activist. She was born Isabella Baumfree, a slave. She faced many trials and tribulations during the time she was enslaved. After getting her freedom she sued to get her son back, who was illegally sold. Truth went on to win the case, which made her one of the first African American women to sue a white man and win.
She taught feminist journal writing for several years and became a feminist activist herself. Castillo is a women suffrage writer. Many of her short stories, novels, and poems revolve around the idea of women changing society. The Guardians, I Ask the Impossible, and Women Are Not Roses all revolve around this theme. But the poem that has spoken to many women in the U.S is Women Don’t Riot.
Suzanne Lacy describes her role as an activist artist on page 54 of this chapter as she discusses her collaborative project with Leslie Labowitz, In Mourning and in Rage. The artist states: “The art is in making it compelling; the politics is in making it clear. In Mourning and in Rage took trivialized images of mourners as old, powerless women and transformed them into commanding seven-foot-tall figures angrily demanding an end to violence against women.” What did Lacy mean by this statement? Is performance art such as In Mourning and in Rage an effective means of communicating to the public? How does her recent work Whisper, the Waves, the Wind (fig.
She helped to found the American Equal Rights Association. Anthony and a close friend and activist partner, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. It was larger than the American Woman Suffrage Association, which it finally merged with. The two women traveled the United States together, giving speeches and urging equal treatment of women in the law and in society. Susan B. Anthony also opposed abortion, which she saw as another instance of a "double standard" imposed upon women.
There, she saw the tactics they used for their message to be heard. When she came back to U.S., she joined the National American Women's Suffrage Association. They were fighting for women’s votes on a state-by-state level; whereas Alice believed they could do more on a federal level. So Alice, Lucy, and Crystal went to Washington D.C. to march in a parade that was to be held before the inauguration day President Wilson. When the men saw what the ladies were marching for, they got angry and did whatever it took to stop it.
Despite being warned of imprisonment she joined the women's suffrage movement in Britain and was arrested on several occasions, serving time in jail and going on a hunger strike. This did not prevent her from sneaking into political events, she still protested the government’s refusal to let women speak publicly, by not eating. Even though it was a difficult time in her life, she still managed to stand up for what she believed in. When she returned to the United States in 1910, Paul became involved in the women’s suffrage movement there as well. Driven also to change other laws that affected women, she earned a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1912.
On November 1, 1872, Anthony and her three sisters decided to resister to vote. Of course, she was rejected at first, but Anthony had fire in her soul and would not take no as an answer. She quoted the Fourteenth Amendment's section about voting. It did not contain a qualification about gender. In the end of the argument, Anthony was victorious and she was registered to vote.
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles or gives me any best place (and raising herself to her full height and her voice to a pitch like rolling thunder, she asked) and aren’t I a woman?” In this passage, author Truth is suggesting that she had never been treated with the same respect a white woman would be treated with. Most, if not all men, believed that women shouldn’t have as many rights as men because “Christ wasn’t a woman”. She simply rebuked that phrase by asking where Christ came from. Well, he came from God and a woman of course!
Valenti provides many statistics of abuse against women here in the United States as well as examples of evidence for the mistreatment of women. Valenti's appeals began before she had written a single word, mainly due to her being a woman. She appeals to the emotional side of her readers, writing that we “cry with Oprah and laugh with Tina Fey”, that we are “fooling ourselves” into believing that a “mirage of equality...is the real thing." She is trying to explain that it is a sort of ignorance-is-bliss situation: look at all these successful women on television so how could equality not exist? She also cites facts, while maintaining an emotion, by mentioning George Sodini, who specifically targeted women in his shooting “killing three women and injuring nine others."
Every time Polly starts to speak her mind in her usual rude manner, she starts croaking like a big toad. Everyone notices Polly and laughs at her. Throughout Polly’s story she learns that if she is nice to people, and complements them she will not croak. Polly also notices that her days end a lot happier when she is nicer to people. Polly soon realizes that no matter what she does she will never be able to say a crossword to anyone ever again even if it is needed.