Right Side Up Again

I can't read, but I can hear. I have heard the bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well, if woman upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again. Sojourner Truth, 1851

SUSAN B. ANTHONY: Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crimes of having voted in the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but, instead simply exercised my citizens rights guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any state to deny. Luke 4:18-19 ESV The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because she has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. She has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. MOTHER JONES: This, my friends, marks, in my estimation history in the long ages to come. What is it: it is an uprising of the oppressed against the master class? From this day on, my friends, we shall march in the front of the Nations states. Sojourner Truth: I want to say a few words about this matter. I am a womans rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? Shirley Chisholm: Mr. Speaker, when a young woman graduates from college and starts looking for a job, she is likely to have a frustrating and even demeaning experience ahead of her. If she walks into an office for an interview, the first question she will be asked is do you type? Galatians 3:8 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. WILMA PEARL MANKILLER: My great aunt Maggie Gourd was a very good storyteller who believed in the power of dreams. She once told us about a dream in which a large animal a bull or a buffalo- tried to break into her house by repeatedly ramming her front door. When she woke up the next morning, her front door was badly damaged. I remember
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only fragments of the dream stories Maggie shared, but I recall clearly that in her stories that there were no absolute lines between dreams and reality. SUSAN B. ANTHONY: We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the united states of America. Sojourner Truth: But the women are coming up blessed by God and a few of the men are coming up with them. But Man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard. MOTHER JONES: You see, my friends, with the coal mine strike, how quickly the Governor sent his militia when the coal operator got scared to death.Have you seen where these women and children live? They wouldnt even keep their dogs where they keep you. You know that. The mine owners wives will take the dogs up and say I love you, dog. My friends the day for petting dogs is gone. The day for raising children to a nobler manhood and better womanhood is here. You have suffered. Now, Brothers, your banners are history; they will go down to the future ages, to the children unborn, to tell them that the slave has risen, children must be free. Proverbs 14:1 "The wise woman builds her house, But the foolish tears it down with her own hands."

Shirley Chisholm: There is a calculated system of prejudice that lies unspoken behind that question. Why is it acceptable for women to be secretaries, libraries, and teachers, but totally unacceptable for them to be managers, administrators, doctors, lawyers, and member of congress?

WILMA PEARL MANKILLER: There were other important women in my early childhood but none more important than my mother Irene Sitton Mankiller, who has provided me with a lifetime of unconditional love. My mother never sat me down and said this is how you should live or this is what it means to be a woman. I learned a lot from watching her and the other woman around me. I remain grateful to both parents for never telling me, Girls cant do that. And for letting me define for myself what it means to be a woman.
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John 10:10b I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. SUSAN B. ANTHONY: It was we, the people: not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we the whole people, who formed the Union, and We formed it, not to give the blessing of liberty, but to secure them: not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessing of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government the ballot MOTHER JONES: The labor movement was a command by God Almighty..Oh men of wealth! Oh you preachers! You are going over to China and sending money over there for Jesus. For Gods sake, keep it at home, we need it. When we crossed the bridge at the Washington Coal mines, the miners were hollering I asked what is the matter with you They said, Oh God, Murder! Murder! Another miner came out, and his feet never touched the sidewalk. Sojourner Truth: Why children if you have womens rights give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they wont be so much trouble. I cant read but I can hear. I have heard the bible and have learned that Eve caused man to sin. Well, if women upset the world, do give her a chance to set it right side up again. Shirley Chisholm: The unspoken assumption is that women are different. We do not have executive ability, orderly minds, stability, leadership skills, and we are too emotional. It has been observed before, that society for a long time, discriminated against another minority, the blacks on the same basis that they were different and inferior. The happy little homemaker and the contented old darkey on the plantation were both produced by prejudice. Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. (NLT) WILMA PEARL MANKILLER: After we made the move to California, a number of women reached out to me. Without them, I dont know how I would ever have become a successful
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adult. I especially value the time I had my maternal grandmother, Pearl Sitton, who was a reassuring presence during a time when I felt confused, lost and out of place. I was teased a lot because I spoke with an Oklahoma accent and looked ethnic But the biggest difference between me and the other children.while they had learned to ride a bicycle, skate on roller skates, or play with a hula hoop, I had never even spoken on a telephone or used a plush commode before our arrival in San Francisco. Proverbs 11:16 A kindhearted woman gains respect, but ruthless men gain only wealth. (NIV) SUSAN B. ANTHONY: For any state to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of attainder, or, an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it, the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from women and their female posterity. MOTHER JONES: But the landowners are to blame. You give your missionary woman a couple of hundred dollars and rob you under pretense of giving to Jesus. Jesus never sees a penny of it, and never heard of it. I want to show you here that the average wages you fellows get in this country is $500 a year. Before you get a thing to eat there is a $20 take out a month, which leaves you $24.but you cant get food for your wife or children because they had to take 2/3 of the rent because you are charged $6 a month. Go down men of today, who rob and exploit, go down into hell and look at the ruins you have put there, look at the jails. we pay 6 million dollars for jails and nothing for education. Sojourner Truth: I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as much as any man and can eat as much too, if I get it. I am as strong as any man that is now. As for intellect, all I can say is, if a woman has a pint, and a man a quart why cant she have her little pint full? You need not be afraid to give us our rights for fear we will take too much,-for we cant take more than our pintll hold. The poor man seems to be all in confusion, and dont know what to do. 1 Corinthians 11:11-12 In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God.

Shirley Chisholm. As a black person, I am no stranger to race prejudice. But the truth is that in the political world I have been far oftener discriminated against because I am a woman than because I am black. Prejudice against blacks is becoming unacceptable although it will take years to eliminate it. But it is doomed because, slowly, white America is beginning to admit that it exists. Prejudice against women is still acceptable. SUSAN B. ANTHONY: To them this government has not just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex: the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe: an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. Shirley Chisholm: And for this reason that I wish to introduce today a proposal that has been in front of congress for the last 40 yrs.the equal rights amendment. Women do not have the opportunities that men do. And women that do not conform to the system, who try to break with the accepted patterns are stigmatized as odd and unfeminine. Women need no protection that men do not need. What we need are laws to protect working people to guarantee them fair pay, safe working conditions, protection against sickness and layoffs and provision for dignified, comfortable retirement. Jeremiah 22:3 ESV Thus says the Lord: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place. MOTHER JONES: I have no apologies to offer. I have seen your children murdered: I have seen you blown to death in the mines with no redressThe night before the little Johnson boys were killed, the mine inspector said the owner said the mines were properly secured. The next morning the little Johnson boys went to work, and they were found with their hands clasped in their dinner buckets with two biscuits. Sojourner Truth: The lady has spoken about Jesus, how he never spurned woman from him, and she was right. When Lazarus died, Mary and Martha came to him with faith and love and besought him to raise their brother. And Jesus wept and Lazarus came forth. And how come Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and the woman who bore him. Man, where was your part?

Shirley Chisholm. More than half the population of the United States is female. But women occupy only 2 percent of the managerial positions. They have not even reached the level of tokenism yet. There have been only 2 women who have held cabinet rank and only two women now hold ambassadorial rank in the diplomatic corps. In congress, we are down to one senator and 10 representatives. Considering there are 3 million more women in the US than men.this situation is outrageous. MOTHER JONES: I know the wrongs of humanity; I know our aching backs; I know your swimming heads; I know your little children suffer; I know your wives. I have gone in and found her dead and found the babe nursing at the dead breast, and found the little girl 11 years old taking care of three children. She said Mother will you wake up. Baby is hungry and crying? When I lay my hand on mamma she breathed her last. And child of 11 had to become mother to the children. You stole, you murdered, you assassinated, you starved, you burned them to death and your wives have palaces. Isaiah 58:6 ESV Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? WILMA PEARL MANKILLER: With a beehive hairdo precariously on my head, I was married just a few days before my 18th birthday. My husband expected me to step completely away from involvement in the Indian center and from my birth family. However, I had an avid interest in social justice issues and the extraordinary world around me. There were already many debates and discussion of Red Power, civil rights, and womens rights. There were anti war demonstrations throughout the area. SUSAN B. ANTHONY: An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarch of race where the Saxons rules the African, fight be endured but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husbands, sons the oligarchs over the mother, and sisters, the wife and the daughters, of every household which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion into every home of the nation.

MOTHER JONES: Oh, God, of the mighty clan, God grant that the woman who suffered for you. Suffered not for a coward, but oh, for a man. God grant that the woman who suffered for you. Suffered not for a coward, but oh, for a fighting man. Matthew 5:10 Blessed are those who are persecuted for justice sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Shirley Chisholm: Men and women need these things equally. That one sex needs protection more than the other is a male supremacist myth as ridiculous and unworthy of respect as white supremacist myths that society is trying to cure itself of at this time WILMA PEARL MANKILLER: By the time I was 23, any notion that I could live my life as wife and mother as defined by my husband and the social constraints of that time was gone forever. I started thinking about college; and the beehive hairdo, makeup, and heels were replaced by long straight hair and sensible shoes. SUSAN B. ANTHONY: The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons?