Two women named
Women, justice and what it means to be human
By Mary J. Streufert T
Ida
wo women named Ida have been on my mind as I think about social and religious change. T eir lives were marked by harms of diff erent and similar sorts, as well as positive social change. Times of social change are kairos moments in history, but they don’t
just happen. T ey are preceded by awareness, which leads to changes of mind and heart. And changes in mind and heart lead to advocacy, and advocacy eventually produces social change. T ese are kairos moments. T ey take intellectual and spiritual work. Consider two Idas. When my maternal grandma, Ida Bierwin, was 12,
the Women’s Suff rage Act passed. It was 1920, and for the fi rst time women across the U.S. could vote. It was a kairos moment in history— a time of clarity and change, of something new. For years women and men
IDA B. WELLS PAPERS, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS RESEARCH CENTER, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LIBRARY Ida B. Wells-Barnett
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agitated for this legal right against deeply held beliefs about the nature of humanity. Francis Parkman, a histo- rian from that era, captures the anti-suff rage sentiment: “Neither Congress, nor the States, nor the united voice of the whole people could permanently change the essential relations of the sexes. Universal female suff rage, even if decreed, would undo itself in time. ... T e question is ... whether we shall adopt this supreme device for developing the defects of women. ... Let us respect them; and, that we may
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