I have been reflecting recently on the first female candidate for the US Presidency. The year was 1872, the party: The National Radical Reformers, and the candidate: Victoria Claflin Woodhull. Her name never actually made it to the ballot because technically she wasn’t a citizen. To be a citizen, one had to vote, and she didn’t have the right....Although Victoria had neither the vote nor citizenship, she did have the backing of a group of citizens (The Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage) who wrote her name in at voting time.
It’s hard to imagine what life must have been like for women at the time Woodhull bid for the Presidency, but Charles Mansell-Moullin gives us a glimpse forty years later, in the London Daily Mirror, November 22, 1910. After witnessing the treatment of suffragettes, he writes:
“The women were treated with the greatest brutality. They were pushed about in all directions and thrown down by the police. Their arms were twisted until they were almost broken. Their thumbs were bent back, and they were tortured in other nameless ways that made one sick at the sight….These things were done by the police. There were in addition organised bands of well-dressed roughs who charged backwards and forwards through the deputation like a football team without any attempt being made to stop them by the police, but they contented themselves with throwing the women down and trampling upon them.”
These women (and the men who supported them) endured much and left an incredible legacy, as do all people who dare to lead in dangerous and unsavory places, whether we regard their struggles or not. The rights to vote, preach, worship, study, work, own land, and many other personal freedoms have been won not so much by elected officials, but by small brave bands of individuals who took a stand.
None of us are self-made. We stand and live upon the legacy of a great cloud of witnesses who have lived before us, standing and speaking for inclusion, justice, and peace. We are who we are, at least in part, because they did what they did.
As we remember them, we would also do well to remember those who will come after us. What we say and do matters. It matters greatly not only for us, but for those who will follow, who will stand upon our legacy. Silence and inaction never made a difference for the oppressed. Knowing only makes a difference when backed by speaking and acting in bold ways, taking a stand to alter injustice.
St. Paul writes, “We who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of one another.”
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