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6 Leaders of Tomorrow! FEBRUARY 1997 MBC Wolverine OBSERVER
Women's Right To Vote
L
by Sean Gardener
(Political Analyst)
ast fall, as I reflected on the 100th anniver
sary of the wretched 1896 Supreme Court
case Plessy vs. Ferguson, I also thought
about the 76th anniversary of the woman’s right to
vote. In 1920, decades of conferences, debates and
protests yielded something beautiful and necessary:
Congress ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the
Constitution, thereby enabling women to be
partners, participants and players in this ever-
evolving democracy.
And who, you ask, were some of
the extraordinary Black women who
worked in the trenches and at the
forefront of the battle for gender
equality in the political arena?
There was Sojourner Truth, Francis
Ellen Watkins Harper, Josephine St.
Ruffin, Mary McLeod Bethune,
Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells-
Bamett, Anna Julia Cooper,
Charlotte Ray, among others.
They were the definitions of “real
women.” Women who broke down
barriers, in both attitudes and
architecture. Women who eloquently
pointed out the difference between
the aspiration of equality and the
reality of equality. Women who gave
voice and image to democracy and
worked overtime for the full fruition
of the powerful searing promises of
our Founding Fathers. Women who
picked up the shattered pieces and
made them whole. Women, from
whose legacies we receive know
ledge, from whose spirits we
receive strength.
They were visionaries. Sisters.
Queens. Trailblazers. Pioneers.
Warriors. She-roes. Wo-mentors.
Race women. Incisive thinkers.
Captivating orators. Accomplished
academicians. Masters strategists.
World citizens.
As a tribute to these individuals
and to the political divas (Represent
atives Maxine Waters and Cynthia
McKinney) who carry on their work,
I will end this short essay with
what is arguably the best poem
from the early American Women’s
Rights Movement. It comes from
feminist extraordinaire Francis
Ellen Watkins Harper. Her poem,
“Dialogue on Women’s Rights,”
appeared in the New York
Freeman in 1898:
JACOB
I don't believe a single bit
In those new-fangled ways
Of women running to the polls
And voting nowadays.
Now there's my Betsy, just as good
As any wife need be
Who sits and tells me day by day
That women are not free;
And then I smile and say to her,
"You surely make me laff;
This talk about your rights and wrongs
I nothing else but chaff."
JOHN
Now, Jacob, I don't think like you;
I think that Betsy Ann
Has just as good a right to vote
As you or any man
JACOB
Now, John, do you believe for true
In women running around.
And when you come to look for them
They are not to found?
Pray, who would stay at home to nurse.
To cook, to wash and sew.
While women marched unto the polls?
That's what I want to know.
JOHN
Who stays at home when Betsy Ann
Goes out day after day
To wash and iron, cook and sew.
Because she gets her pay?
I'm sure she wouldn't take quite so long
To vote and go her way.
As when she leaves her little ones
And works out day by day.
JACOB
Well, I declare, that is the truthl
To vote, it don't take long;
But, then, I kind of think somehow
That women's voting's wrong.
JOHN
The masters thought before the war
That slavery was right;
But we who felt the heavy yoke
Didn't see it in that light.
Some thought that it would never do
For us in Southern Lands,
To change the fetters on our wrists
For the ballot in our hands.
Now if you don't believe 'twas right
To crowd us from the track
How can you push your wife aside
And try to hold her back?
JACOB
Well, wrong is wrong and right is right.
For woman as for man
I almost think that I will go
And vote with Betsy Ann.
JOHN
I hope you will and show the world
you can be brave and strong
A noble man, who scorns to do
The feeblest woman wrong.
PROJECT
VOTE SMART
$100,000
Available
to MBC
by Elise Senter
Morris Brown College students
are eligible for up to $100,000 in
scholarship funds, through Project
Vote Smart’s National Internship
Program. The funds, which are
made available through grants from
the Hearst Foundation, have been
released by the Project’s founding
board, which includes former
senators Barry Goldwater, George
McGovern, Mark Hatfield and Bill
Bradley, and other prominent
national leaders.
“These scholarships enable Morris
Brown College students to work
with interns from colleges across the
country for a semester or term, to
improve the political climate for
everyone,” said Ann Yoders, National
Internship Coordinator. “Armed
with the computers and phones of
our Voter’s Self-Defense System, our
interns fight political hype every
day, by requiring candidates and
elected officials to be accountable for
their campaign statements and
actions while in office.”
Yoders said that students from all
fields of study at Morris Brown
College are encouraged to apply for
internships at Project Vote Smart,
this year. Their work at the Project
might focus on researching hot
current issues, tracking campaign
finance donations, gathering
campaign issue positions, or
compiling voting records and
performance evaluations of
candidates and elected officials at
the federal and state levels.
Students serve as researchers on the
Voter’s Research Hotline (1-800-622-
SMART), and maintain and update
the Vote Smart Web site
(http;//www.vote-smart.org).
“We are very interested in
diversifying our staff, to reflect the
information needs and demands of
the American public,” said Yoders.
Students wanting more information
about internship and scholarship
opportunities should call Ann Yokers
at 541-754-2746 or e-mail at
intem@vote-smart. org.
War Illness
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5
American Type Culture Collection in
Maryland. They were sold to
Saddam Hussein as late as 1989,
just prior to the war.
In 1970, Vaccine Safety Tests
were conducted at the University of
Maryland. It has been brought
forward that it may have tested
drugs for the CIA, known as
MKULTRA. It also involved the
experimental use of LSD on the
public without their knowledge.
Critics disclose that human subjects
did not know what they were getting
either before or after the tests. The
people involved in this were 44
colleges, 15 research foundations or
chemical companies, 12 hospitals,
and 3 prisons.
House Bill 15090 is the
appropriations hearing in 1970 for
the Department of Defense. It says
that “we believe that within 5 to 10
years, it would be possible to
produce a synthetic biological agent
that does not naturally exist and for
which no natural immunity could
have been acquired. It would also be
possible to make a new ineffective
microorganism, most importantly, it
might be damaging to the
immunological and therapeutic
processes upon which we depend to
maintain our relative freedom from
infectious disease. In 1975, the first
recorded “AIDS” related death
occurred with perfect timing.
The author notes that the Gulf
War was to infect the U.S. military
and subsequently the U.S. and
world population, to reacquire the
Kuwait oil fields (which are owned
by a well-known family in London),
and to test weaponry on Iraq. In
addition, president Bush and other
members of his administration held
stock in some of the biotech
companies that produced the
biological weapons used against the
U.S. troops and they shipped them
to Iraq. Another company, U.S.
Arms, sold Iraq conventional
weapons to be used against U.S.
troops. The late secretary of
agriculture, Ron Brown, who was in
the aircraft that was blown up in
Bosnia, was on the board of
directors of U.S. Arms. Four
individuals on that plane were to
testify in an upcoming hearing.
Traces of thermite found on the
bodies revealed that explosives had
been used.
The biological agent, Mycoplasma
Incognitas, is the chief one found to
be responsible for the illness of the
veterans. It is between the size of a
bacteria and virus, travels through a
population, and as long as your
immune system is all right it will
not affect you. According to Garth
and Nancy Nicholson, who are both
Ph.D. cellular biologists, they found
that the scientists who were
involved in this demonic plot
inserted 40% of the HTV envelope
gene into the Mycoplasma. It will
not give you HIV, but it will give
you the symptoms.
The Nicholsons found that an
antibiotic called Doxycycline was
effective, but the U.S. military or
the VA hospitals will not allow
military members under their
control to dispense it. You must
remember, this disease is
contagious. The author says that “it
is going to affect you in the general
population. It is not just the U.S.,
but it is a worldwide program. There
were 28 countries that served with
the U.S. in Iraq. All 28 countries
now report that their men and
women are sick.”
If Saddam wanted to kill our
soldiers, he could have, but that was
not the plan. He gave the soldiers a
long-term disease that they would
bring back here, to the states. What
better way to give a country a
disease like this than to give it to
the military? They move all over the
country, what else can be said?
This article is based on a lecture by
Captain Joyce Riley in Houston, Texas on
January 15, 1996. If you wish to read the
entire lecture, you can find it on
http://www.all-natural.eom/riley.html#Top