The Newsletter of the Deeds Not Words Community

Hello #ChangeMakers!

The day is almost upon us! We are on the verge of a historic election. No matter which camp you belong to, a female candidate making it onto the ballot for a major party this year shows how far women have come in this country.
 
Every citizen reading this has a right to vote for any candidate they choose tomorrow and help write our future. This is a big responsibility but also a gift, and we have many important women, and men, to thank for it.
    
 
You may have learned about the great suffragist Susan B. Anthony in a history class at some point in school, and her role in passing the 19^th Amendment to our Constitution that gave women the right to vote. Chances are you didn’t learn about Alberta Schenck Adams or Shirley Chisholm, though their roles in getting us here are no less important.
 
Below we highlight 10 of these women who may not have been bold-faced in your history book, but whose civic engagement changed history. They spoke up, stood up and got back up – all to make America a better place for women today.
 
Not all those fighting for change become household names like Rosa Park and Eleanor Roosevelt, but their contributions matter – and yours does too! The story of women shaping America is older than America itself (as you’ll see with our first #ChangeMaker below), so don’t let that end here.
 
You are important. Your voice is important, so let that voice be heard. Vote tomorrow. This simple action is small but mighty. YOU, #ChangeMaker, have the power to shape the world you wish to see!
 
xo,
- Wendy

1637: Anne Hutchinson is banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony
 
A “courageous exponent of civil liberty,” Anne Hutchinson broke the Puritan mold of what was expected of a woman by fighting for religious freedom. Expelled from her home colony, she founded one of her own alongside Roger Williams, which we now know as Rhode Island.
    

Learn more: Parts of this podcast were recorded in front of the Chipotle in downtown Boston that is the site of where Hutchinson lived and taught her followers. Awesome.

1867: Sojourner Truth addressed the American Equal Rights Association
 
Civil rights activist Truth’s speech made rock solid point: enslaved black women were forced to do manual labor; if these women were able to perform such tasks, they should be allowed to vote because surely voting is easier than building roads.
   

Learn more: Check out this video of actress Kerry Washington delivering Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman” speech.

1870: Louisa Swain was the first woman to cast a vote in the United States

Two decades before statehood, the Wyoming Territorial Legislature granted women the right to vote - 50 years before the 19th Amendment that would grant that right to all women in America. Wyoming is now known as the “Equality State” because of it.
   

Learn More: Read here about how eager she was to exercise her right – even before the polling place opened.

1920: Charlotte Woodward saw women’s suffrage pass 72 years after signing the Declaration of Sentiments
 
Of the women who organized at Seneca Falls for the country’s first ever women’s rights convention, only Charlotte Woodward of Seneca Falls Convention was alive to see the passage of the 19^th Amendment that granted women the right to vote. Sadly, bed-ridden on Election Day, she was unable to exercise that right.
   

Learn More: Check out these five facts that give color to the life of this important suffragist.

1944: Alberta Schenck Adams refused to rise in Alaska’s Nome Theater

A decade before Rosa Park’s stood kept her seat on the bus, native woman Albert Shenck refused to move to the non-white section of the theater she frequented. Writing a letter for then Governor Ernest Gruening about the incident, she inspired him to reintroduce Alaska’s Anti-Discrimination Act, which passed a year later.
  
 
Learn more: Listen to the whole story of this brave woman’s act for indigenous and civil rights. 

1945: Lucy Hicks Anderson challenges perjury accusation in the trial of her marriage as a trans woman

When the court argued that Lucy wasn’t legally married to her second husband because she was born a biological male, she stood her ground that her lived identity was more valid than what was printed on her birth certificate.

Learn more: Watch the story of a pioneer whose testimony in court paved the way for marriage equality and trans women’s rights decades before this fight went mainstream.

1972: Shirley Chisholm becomes the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination
 
An educator, author and legislator Shirley Chisholm’s career was full of firsts. Chisholm was the first African American woman elected to US Congress in 1968 and the first black candidate for a major US party nomination four years later.



Learn More: Listen to Chilsholm’s powerful words as she declares her 1972 Presidential bid!

1992: Dolores Huerta leads the Feminist Majority’s 1992 Feminization of Power campaign
 
Dolores Huerta has led a long career of civil rights activism, starting with her cofounding the National Farmworkers Association (now United Farm Workers) alongside Cesar Chavez to improve the lives of vulnerable laborers. At 85 years old, she’s still fighting and calls herself a “born-again feminist”.
 


Learn More: Watch Huerta call out the 58 sexist comments she heard in a United Farm Workers meeting.

1998: Lilly Ledbetter sues Goodyear for paying her less than her male counterparts
 
Retiring after nearly twenty years at Goodyear, Lily Ledbetter then sued the company for paying her significantly less than her male colleagues. Her claim was denied by the Supreme Court due to filing suit over 180 days after receiving her first paycheck, but eventually led to Congress loosening the timeliness requirements for the filing of a discrimination suit via the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.

 
Learn More: Watch Lily tell her story and its importance for women and minorities.

2016: YOU will vote on Tuesday, November 8th

You will exercise your most important right by voting for what you believe in this Election Day. Take pride in knowing that you, too, changed the course of history.