Emmanuel UCC sponsors community conversation on women’s equality

By Ingrid Utech, Correspondent, Highlands News-Sun

SEBRING — Women’s Equality Day was the theme of the second bi-monthly community conversation recently held at Emmanuel United Church of Christ in Sebring. While the day is an annual celebration of women’s right to vote, which occurred on Aug. 26, 1920, the day is also a celebration of women’s efforts to achieve equality in other areas. Speaker Millie Grime, a women’s rights advocate, paid tribute to some of the courageous women who have fought for equal rights in the last 100 years.

Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) is most noted for her efforts to secure the vote for women through a national constitutional amendment. Grime pointed out that she was also responsible for advancing some of the most important women’s rights legislation in relation to property and employment.

Black suffragist and investigative reporter Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) wrote courageous exposes of the horrors of lynching in the 1890s. When that led to death threats and the destruction of her newspaper office in Memphis, she moved to Chicago and founded the Alpha Suffrage Club. The club organized women to elect candidates who would best serve the Black community. Last year, Wells was awarded post- humously a long-overdue Pulitzer Prize.

Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977), the daughter of sharecroppers, rose from her humble beginnings to become one of the most passionate and powerful civil rights and voting rights activists of the 1960s. She engaged in acts of civil disobedience, enduring violence and intimidation from white supremacists.

Lilly Ledbetter was one of the first women hired by Goodyear Tire Company for a position in management. She worked 19 years at Goodyear. After she re- tired, she learned that she had made thousands less each year than the men in comparable positions at Goodyear...

Photos by: Ingrid Utech

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