A League of Their Own Voters
The Maundy Monday Newsletter - This Week in History February 10 - 16.
Anonymous and I found out one of our favorite restaurants is now a popular hangout for supporters of President Trump and the Make America Great Again fascist movement.
It’s weird to live among fascists. I don’t even think they think they are fascists, which makes it crazy odd. They wear the hats, dress in red, and all look the same. Plus, they are always mad. How could you not notice?
These MAGA fascists like the half-price wine on Wednesday. I’m not mad about the place having them over. It’s smack dab in the center where these people have decided to reside. Who doesn’t like half-priced wine, with the price of eggs these days?
Our first and highest-ranked amendment to the Constitution guarantees us the right to assemble, and like-minded people tend to unite and advocate for the causes they believe in.
For our friends who align themselves with the MAGA movement, they gather around half-price wine night and idolatry. 125 years ago, a group of women decided to get women registered to vote.
In 1920, the 19th Amendment passed and flooded the market with newly anointed voters. Women fought for years for the right to cast their votes, and finally, it was achieved. But all these women needed help registering and becoming knowledgeable about what they were voting for. Men certainly weren’t going to do it.
Enter The League of Women Voters, established on February 14, 1920.
Carrie Chapman Catt founded the organization. Catt was born in Wisconsin, moved to Iowa as a child, and convinced her dad to let her enroll at Iowa State, where in 1880, she became the first female graduate. She then worked as a law clerk and later became a school superintendent.
After marrying a fellow Iowa State Cyclone, Catt began writing essays and speeches on women’s suffrage, catching the attention of like-minded women. In 1892, Susan B. Anthony asked Catt to speak to Congress on the latest women’s voting rights amendment. By 1900, Anthony had chosen Catt to be her successor.
The LWV was formed a few months before the 19th Amendment was passed and was a huge help in organizing the movement and driving the issue across the finish line and into permanent law.
Today, The LWV is now seen as a leftist, Marxist, and Socialist organization. Mainly because they provide education and advocacy for voting rights, things fascists tend to dislike as they sip half-priced wine in the place where I had my rehearsal dinner. The LWV's big service is a website allowing people to type in their addresses and view the candidates and the issues at stake in their respective elections.
Sounds awful.
Okay, let's highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events celebrate their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here's what I got:
1. Arthur Miller died on February 10, 2005. The American playwright was born in Harlem, married Marilyn Monroe, and won a Pulitzer Prize. His Death of a Salesman play perfectly describes my career path: somewhat depressing, and no one is paying attention. Miller was also a member of the League of American Writers. He was 89 when he passed away.
2. Utah Territory gave women the right to vote on February 12, 1870. Hamilton Wilcox was a woman suffragist from New York who wanted to test the theory that women could walk into a voting booth and know what to do, so he tried it out west. He coordinated with suffrage leaders from the Church of Later-Day Saints and gained voting rights. Only Wyoming gave women suffrage earlier. All of it was revoked in 1877. So there you go.
3. Charles Schultz passed away on February 12, 2000. Schultz, the creator of the syndicated Sunday comic Peanuts, created a world of children from which no adult was seen or heard. From 1950 until his death, Peanuts ran in over 3,600 newspapers with an estimated readership of around 355 million across 75 countries. His main characters were Charlie Brown and his dog, Snoopy. Blue and I are very much the same in this respect.
It’s going to be a long week here in the OKH household. Anonymous is gone all week, and when she returns, I leave for Ohio for the weekend. So it’s just Blue and me and a house full of meals to cook by myself.
Thanks for supporting Okay History. I’ll see you this Friday with another Scandal Ranking. Have a great week!
Okay,
Chris
