Showing posts with label Evie Shockley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Evie Shockley. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

Voting and being counted . . .

      A story in the KIDSPOST section of today's Washington Post offers a reminder that 100 years ago today -- on August 18, 1920 --  the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was officially ratified -- extending the right to vote to women.
      Here is a link to a poem by Evie Shockley women’s voting rights at one hundred (but who’s counting?) -- and, below, a few lines from that important poem:

           * * *
     one-mississippi
     two-mississippis


          * * *
     one vote was all fannie lou
     hamer wanted. in 1962, when
     her constitutional right was
     over forty years old, she tried
     to register. all she got for her
     trouble was literacy tested, poll
     taxed, fired, evicted, & shot
     at. a year of grassroots activism
     nearly planted her mississippi
     freedom democratic party
     in the national convention.

          * * *
For additional postings related to math and women and voting, here is a link to the results of a blog Search using the terms women and vote.