Sunday Randomness #202 : Have you voted in the primary yet?

For my fellow voters in Utah: please get your primary vote in by June 25th if you have a ballot.  Here's a parody video to help educate the newer generations about suffrage, votes, and voting for women:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co6qKVBciAw


For more about Rep. Burns:  http://www.teachtnhistory.org/File/Harry_T._Burn_Top_10.pdf
(It really is worth the read-especially the two telegrams at the end.)  I also like his quote of freeing women from political slavery.

"I desire to resent in the name of honesty and justice the veiled intimidation and accusation regarding my vote on the Suffrage Amendment as indicated in certain statements, and it is my sincere belief that those responsible for their existence know that there is not a scintilla of truth in them. I want to state that I changed my vote in favor of ratification first because I believe in full suffrage as a right; second, I believe we had a moral and legal right to ratify; third, I knew that a mother’s advice is always safest for a boy to follow and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification; fourth, I appreciated the fact that an opportunity such as seldom comes to a mortal man to free seventeen million women from political slavery was mine; fifth, I desired that my party in both State and nation might say that it was a republican from the East mountains of Tennessee, the purest Anglo-Saxon section in the world, who made national woman suffrage possible at this date, not for personal glory but for the glory of his party."  Representative Harry T. Burns

2013 Summer Movies: #15 Iron Jawed Angels

Iron Jawed Angels came out in 2004 and follows the story of Alice Paul and the NWP (National Woman's Party) after they broke off from the NAWSA (National American Women's Suffrage Association).  Paul's group picketed President Wilson and endured attacks from the public and politicians in their fight to get a Federal amendment giving women the right to vote.  They were arrested on false charges and send to Occoquan Workhouse where they were brutally treated.   The abuses they suffered in the workhouse led to newspaper stories about the abuses and the  suffrage cause.  The press helped the women's cause by revealing the abuses and garnering public sympathy and support for the amendment.

It's not the children's storybook version of the 19th Amendment but it's a powerful story of how hard and how long women from all classes worked for this right to have representation in American government.  The movie is not rated (NR) since it was made for tv but we estimate it would have received a PG-13 for the prison brutality and forced feeding scenes.  Ironically, we started watching this film (it took a few days to finish it) on the 93rd anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment back on August 18, 1920. 

Utah gave women the right to vote in 1870.