Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Jane Addams. To most people, these women are relative unknowns. Their names may sound familiar, like a character from an obscure movie you once saw or the name of a woman from one of the many books we are forced to read during high school.
The sad fact is that the exact role these women played in the history of our country is a mystery to most people born after 1955. Their fame seems to rest solely on the shoulders of United States historians and Women's Studies majors.
But the contribution of these women and many more like them is one that has affected all people in our nation since the early 1850s. They brought about a change that caused our society to turn its head — a change that caused the lives of half the population of the United States of America to turn from nothing to everything. These women are some of the key players in the Women's Movement.
Now let me give you another set of names: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Robert E. Lee. Do those names sound familiar? If you passed 11th-grade American history, they better.
From kindergarten to senior year of high school, we are taught ad nauseam about the many people who have made this country the great place it has become. We hear about presidents, generals, politicians, and statesmen. Most Americans can name the key players in major movements from the American Revolution to the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-1960s.
But there is one movement that was left out of that 11th-grade history class — a movement that didn't quite make the cut past a small excerpt next to prohibition and the beginnings of jazz. If a person looks very closely, most women mentioned in American history are women who are in some way or another connected to a more powerful man. Now I'm not trying to diminish the role of any person from Benjamin Franklin to Eleanor Roosevelt, or the role they played in our country's history. But history has forgotten a great deal of women who have accomplished huge feats of change and social betterment throughout the world.
Why are women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alice Paul, and Jane Addams, who changed the lives of millions of women, written out of history books?
During the early 1900s, Jane Addams was the most famous woman in America. She founded the U.S. Settlement Movement, was Vice-President of the National American Women's Suffrage Association and was the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Alice Paul stood outside the White House for months calling for a woman's right to vote, even going so far as to go on a hunger strike while in jail for her efforts. Such remarkable women should be household names just like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. or Cesar Chavez, right?
Women like Addams and Paul helped move women from merely watching from the sidelines to actually playing the game. These women changed the course of history just as Dr. King, Franklin or any president or general did. And while these men are rightly remembered for their specific roles in American history, all American women should remember and honor the sacrifices women like Addams, Paul and Susan Anthony made in their own lives.
American women owe these brilliant people their lives, and it is one of my greatest hopes that someday children will learn about how women changed America forever, and paved the way for future women like Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice and yes, even Angelina Jolie.
So ladies, when you mark your ballot this November, get that diploma in May or apply for that dream job, please remember the women who gave you that right. They deserve our thanks.
Sarah can be reached by e-mail at: sarah.maschoff@asu.edu.
