Praise 24/7 NO Today's Best Gospel
(ThyBlackMan.com) Forty-five years ago, President Jimmy Carter issued the first presidential proclamation designating March 2-8, 1980, as National Women’s History Week. The final day of that period was International Women’s Day, which had already been celebrated in many countries for much of the 20th century and recognized by the United Nations as a day to acknowledge women’s contributions and call for women’s economic, political and civil rights. American women historians, community leaders and advocates believed it was past time for the United States to participate in a national commemoration too. It would be seven more years before the week-long observance expanded to the full month of March, but this was a milestone and victory for American women’s history.
Carter’s proclamation read, “From the first settlers who came to our shores, from the first American Indian families who befriended them, men and women have worked together to build this nation. Too often the women were unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength and love of the women who built America was as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well. As Dr. Gerda Lerner has noted, ‘Women’s history is women’s right.’ – It is an essential and indispensable heritage from which we can draw pride, comfort, courage and long-range vision.”
The proclamation continued, “I urge libraries, schools and community organizations to focus their observances on the leaders who struggled for equality – Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Tubman and Alice Paul. Understanding the true history of our country will help us to comprehend the need for full equality under the law for all our people. This goal can be achieved by ratifying the 27th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states that ‘Equality of Rights under the Law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.’”
Of course, the measure that Carter then hoped would become the 27th Amendment, the Equal Rights Amendment, has still not been enshrined into the Constitution. To the contrary, women’s rights are now under a dangerous onslaught of new attacks, along with the nation’s larger commitment to protecting equal rights for all people and the basic ability to acknowledge, study, and honor American women’s specific history and contributions at all. Just as with February’s commemorations of Black History Month, our nation is marking these observances in perilous times. But prohibitions on talking about or teaching the truth about history in any culture only serve to underscore that history’s importance and value, and once again the long thread of women’s history in America provides examples and light for the current struggle.
Finish story here; 45 Years Later: Jimmy Carter’s Women’s History Call Still Echoes in the Fight for Equality.
Written by: Black Gospel Radio
For every Show page the timetable is auomatically generated from the schedule, and you can set automatic carousels of Podcasts, Articles and Charts by simply choosing a category. Curabitur id lacus felis. Sed justo mauris, auctor eget tellus nec, pellentesque varius mauris. Sed eu congue nulla, et tincidunt justo. Aliquam semper faucibus odio id varius. Suspendisse varius laoreet sodales.
closeCopyright 2024 Praise247no.com - All Rights Reserved.
Post comments (0)