"ERA - JUST ONE MORE STATE"

“ERA – JUST ONE MORE STATE!!!!”

            For baseball fans like me, ERA stands for “earned run average,” which used to be a pretty good measure of a pitcher’s ability.  It has been replaced (sort of) by more modern measurements, but it still remains a good one.  I’m thinking of that because Major League Baseball season starts this week, and though I’m not a fan of a particular team (I would be more of a Braves’ fan, if they would drop their racist name and “tomahawk chop”), I do enjoy the game.  Baseball at least has minor league teams in which the players get some of the money.  Many of us are now watching college basketball’s March Madness – none of those players get any of the billions made on the tournament.

            But, the spring has made me digress – the more important definition of “ERA” is Equal Rights Amendment, first introduced in Congress in 1921 by Alice Paul and others of the National Women’s Political Party.  The National Women’s Party still exists, and their headquarters is in the amazing Belmont-Paul National Women’s House in DC – go see it, if you have not already done so!

            The current version of the ERA reads like this: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex.”  This past week (March 22) was the 47^th anniversary of Congress and the Senate adopting the ERA as the proposed 27^th Amendment to the Constitution and sending it on to the states.  The first state to approve it was Hawaii, and in the early 1970’s it looked like it would pass the necessary 38 state legislatures.  The right-wing got fired up, however, because they correctly perceived that the ERA would permanently codify the fact that women should control their bodies.  The FGFBM (Forced Gestation and Forced Birth Movement) started a campaign of fear and repression and appealed to the male supremacy that is deeply embedded in our culture.  The movement to pass the ERA in the 1970’s stalled at 35 states, but many people continued to work on its passage.  Especially after the election of the misogynist Donald Trump as president, the movement has regained some momentum.  Two more states (Nevada 2017) and Illinois (2018) have approved the ERA as a constitutional amendment, so only one more state is needed to ratify it – yes, that’s right – JUST ONE MORE STATE.

            Some of the states that have ratified it have since rescinded their ratification, but that act will not likely stand up in court.  If you’re wondering if we still need the ERA, just remember “Brett Kavanaugh” and just remember that three white, male supremacist states from the pro-slavery South (my state of Georgia being one of them) have just adopted the “heartbeat” bill, which would effectively institute the FBFGM in these states.  There are 13 states left who have not ratified the ERA:  nine states in the former Confederacy, and these four outside the Confederacy:  Arizona, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Utah.   Tennessee and Texas legislatures have ratified the ERA, and these 9 pro-slavery states are still holding out:  Arkansas (my home state), Alabama, Florida, Georgia (my current state – it was introduced this year but got nowhere in the white male supremacist culture of the state legislature), Louisiana, Mississippi (my forebears’ home), North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. 

            Why all this detail?  So that all of us in these 13 states can work for one (or more) of these states to adopt the ERA.  It would be a fitting tribute for the 100^th anniversary of the passage of 19^th amendment, giving women the right to vote, in 2020.   The work towards the passage of the 19^th Amendment officially began in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, at the first national women’s convention to obtain the right to vote for women.  Seventy-two years later it became law, and only one person (Charlotte Woodward Pierce) who had attended the 1848 convention was still living at that time.  In last week’s blog, I talked about “intersectionality,” and I noted how women’s rights were always at the center of the discussion of intersectionality.  Nowhere is that seen more clearly than in the struggle for the ERA – its passage would not end the struggle, as we have seen with the 14^th Amendment, but at least fundamental, constitutional rights for women would finally be codified.  If you’re living in one of the 13 states named above, join me in getting to work on our state’s passing of the ERA – JUST ONE MORE STATE!

"INTERSECTIONALITY"

“INTERSECTIONALITY”

            One of the truly surprising movements of the 19^th century was the abolitionist movement.  The Constitution of the United States had enshrined slavery and stacked the electoral deck to favor Southern white slaveholders (a stacking that remains today in the Electoral College).  Although Congress abolished the international slave trade in 1808, slavery itself was allowed to remain legal and viable.  In the middle of this ongoing struggle between the idea of equality and the reality of slavery, folk rose up in opposition to slavery – a few at first, including William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Nat Turner, Angelina and Sarah Grimke, Sojourner Truth, David Walker, and others.  One of the other leaders of the abolitionist movement was also a woman named Abigail Kelley, though her role has been largely forgotten (what else is new in the patriarchal annals of American history?)

            For Women’s History Month, I want to revisit her story a bit, because it is  testimony to the necessary problem of “intersectionality,” which we saw played out in the struggles over the recent Women’s March.  Kelley was born in 1811 in Massachusetts to a Friends family and seemed to be destined to be a typical white woman of the 19^th century.  She was converted to an active anti-slavery life by Garrison and by the Grimke sisters, although there was already strain showing in the relationship of those three.   As she got more involved, almost immediately her skills at organizing, fund-raising and public speaking became apparent to all.   Kelley was committed to the abolition of slavery and to equal rights for women, and this intersectionality would cause her, and many others, problems for the rest of her life. 

            Her father died in 1836, and it provoked a deep crisis in her:  “Who am I?  What shall I do now?  How can I know God?”  She was 25 and unmarried, and she wondered if she should begin to look for a husband and settle into domestic life.   After hearing Garrison and the Grimke sisters speak, she decided that her future did not lie in female submission.  She did marry Stephen Symonds Foster, and they became a powerful couple in these intersectional movements.  She answered the call to throw herself into organizing women to oppose slavery.  She helped organize the first national convention of women against slavery in 1837.  The reaction from most males in the anti-slavery movement was ridicule and scorn – woman’s place was in the home.  Yet, Kelley’s talents were clear to those in the leadership of the movement.  She became a lecturer on the payroll of the all-male Anti-Slavery Society.

            She went on the lecture circuit in the West (Ohio and other places) and was an instant sensation.  She was reviled because she was an advocate for two causes at once: abolition of slavery and equal rights for women.  Her growing influence caused riots in public when she spoke.  Women who associated with her were tried in church courts for it.  The anti-slavery movement was split in two because she was a leader in this intersectionality of abolition of slavery and equality of women.  The great Frederick Douglass would criticize her for splitting the movement – he later repented of this and indeed attended the regional Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention in 1848.  And speaking of the difficulty of intersectionality, she and Douglass had a nasty split for several years over this.

            Yet she persevered – she recruited powerful women’s rights advocates Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone. She traveled all over the North organizing and lecturing on abolition and on women’s rights.  Her journey did not end at the close of the Civil War.  The Anti-Slavery Society decided to disband because they thought that slave power had been defeated, but Abby Kelley knew better.  She was the first to speak against the disbanding, because she knew the depth of the slave power in American consciousness.  She and Frederick Douglass became allies again, and they formed a formidable partnership to work for the passage of the 15^th Amendment to extend the vote to black men.  Here came intersectionality again:  her former protégé Susan B. Anthony and others harshly criticized her and Douglass and others for supporting this amendment which gave men the right to vote but not women.  As we know, that amendment passed but was gradually gutted over the next 30 years by the powerful slave lobby.  It would be over 50 years before women won the right to vote. 

            The life of Abby Kelley is worthy of study and remembering because of her powerful witness and the difficult issue of intersectionality.  Throughout the decades of the 19^th century, the issues of abolition and women’s rights intersected and often clashed.  We should learn from her life and the life of others like Frederick Douglass, where these issues formed core values and forced difficult decisions.  Because of the power of patriarchy, women’s rights are almost always one of the roads in intersectionality.  We saw that in the recent struggles over the Women’s March of 2019, where race and gender and anti-Semitism intersected and clashed and weakened that particular movement, yet all the while, all of those issues were important and relevant.

            The support of the 19^th Amendment to give women the right to vote seems to be a no-brainer, but the issue of intersectionality came into that one, too.  The white leaders of that movement repeatedly used race to try to keep out black women’s leadership and to insure that white women and white men in the South would support the 19^th Amendment.  Indeed, the deciding vote in the deciding state for the 19^th Amendment was cast by a white man in the South – Harry Burns in Tennessee.  

            Wherever we find ourselves in this discussion, let us remember all these witnesses and find our place.  Women’s History Month reminds us how difficult, and yet how vital, the issue of intersecitonality is. Women often pay the price for this issue of intersectionality, so let us find our place and make our witness:  the ERA needs one more state for ratification.

"UNBOSSED AND UNBOUGHT"

“UNBOUGHT AN UNBOSSED”

            Fifty years ago on January 21, 1969, Shirley Chisholm took the oath of office to become the first African-American woman to be elected to Congress in United States history.    Her campaign theme had been “Unbossed and Unbought,” and it served her well until her retirement from Congress in 1984. Born Shirley Anita St. Hll in New York to parents from Barbados and Guyana (known as British Guiana then), she shared a similar heritage with Rhianna.

            She got a degree from Brooklyn College and began a career as an educator, running two day care centers.  It was here that she discovered the importance of politics in education, and later got elected as a state “assemblyman” in New York – the title did not yet reflect the astonishing idea that women could wield political power.  She decided to run for Congress from the 12^th District of New York (now represented by Carolyn Maloney), and she won handily.  It was a surprising upset in the election, and she held the seat until she retired. 

            She built up a powerful record of supporting and leading progressive causes in the House.  She was a strong supporter of rights for women, for people of darker skin color, and for those who were poor.  After she was elected to Congress, she was assigned to the Agriculture Committee, which she took as a deliberate slap, because her district was obviously urban.  During her complaining about it, a local Brooklyn rabbi suggested that she take the lemons and make lemonade.  He reminded her that the Ag Committee oversaw the surplus food program, a surplus created by the Agriculture Department’s purchase of farm products in order to keep farm prices up (no welfare here, of course!).   Chisholm got his point and used it to deepen and develop the distribution of these surplus foods to poor people in her and in other districts.  Indeed, when Caroline and I became pastors at Oakhurst Presbyterian, we were approached by the Ag Department to be a center for the distribution of surplus food.  We decided to do it, and we were astonished that each week that we did it, over 1,000 people came in to receive the food – cheese, powdered milk, flour, and other items.  Taking a page from Shirley Chisholm’s book, we never had any surplus food left over, causing the AG Department much chagrin.  They eventually ended the program at Oakhurst a few years later because we gave away too much food!   Chisholm would later use her experience on the Ag Committee to deepen and broaden the food stamp program and to create the WIC program.

            On August 10, 1970, she gave a strong speech on the floor of the House in support of the Equal Rights Amendment, which had not yet been adopted by Congress.  Here is some of what she said:  “The time is clearly now to put this House on record for the fullest expression of that equality of opportunity which our founding fathers professed.  They professed it, but they did not assure it to their daughters, as they tried to do for their sons.  The Constitution they wrote was designed to protect the rights of white, male citizens.  As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers – a great pity on both counts.  It is not too late to complete the work they left undone.  Today, here, we should start to do so.”  It would be almost two years before Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment, and as we all know, we’re still awaiting one more state to approve the ERA, so that it can be ratified and added to the Constitution.

            In January, 1972, Shirley Chisholm announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President, making her the first woman ever to do so and the first African-American to do so.  I remember her announcing her candidacy, and still being in deep captivity to male supremacy, I thought that she was foolish to do this.  We needed to defeat Richard Nixon in his run for re-election, and I felt like Chisholm would only muddy the waters.  We, of course, hear echoes of this in the 2020 presidential announcements.  Chisholm was stung many times by males attacking her in this run, and her retort was simple and sweet:  "I'm looking to no man walking this earth for approval of what I'm doing." 

            As we know, she failed in her bid for the presidency that year, but her candidacy set the stage for many others to follow.  Her record in Congress is pretty stunning:  a leader in the opposition to the Vietnam War, a founder of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971, a founder of the Congressional Women’s Caucus in 1977, the first black woman to serve on the powerful House Rules Committee.  She retired in 1984 to do her “divided duty,” as Susan B. Anthony had chided Ida Wells for doing almost 100 years before.  She was burned out, and she needed to take care of her husband, who had been badly injured in an auto accident.  She remained active in politics and in teaching, and her mantra for political life would serve us well today:  "If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair."   In this Women’s History Month, as we seem to hang in the balance on women’s rights, let us give thanks for pioneers like Shirley Chisholm – unbossed and unbought!

"LENT AND WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH"

“LENT AND WOMEN’S HISTORY”

            The Season of Lent begins this week with Ash Wednesday.  Lent is a time in the church calendar that allows and even invites us to consider our captivity to the powers that lynched Black Jesus on the Cross.  The church has often emphasized that worshippers should give up something for Lent, so that we may know the suffering of humanity and of Black Jesus.  My Protestant heritage has downplayed this “giving up,” and I prefer to focus on my many captivities in this time.   As the man told Black Jesus in Luke 8 when he was asked to give his name, I join him in answering “My name is Legion,” meaning that my demonic possessions are many – so many and so powerful that I have given up my identity to them.  It is this captivity that we are all asked to consider in Lent.

            The Season of Lent usually intersects with Black History Month, and that intersection is a fruitful one for reflection in Lent in the American context. As has often been said, white supremacy is our original American sin, and we would do well to always keep that before us, no matter the liturgical season.  Yet this year, because Easter comes so late (April 21), Lent intersects with Women’s History Month, which exposes an even deeper and wider captivity:  patriarchy and the ideology of male supremacy.  These two forces – white supremacy and male supremacy – often intersect, and Catherine Meeks and I will explore this in in our forthcoming book “Passionate Justice:  Ida Wells as Witness for Our Time,” to be published this fall.   No matter one’s racial classification, however, patriarchy cuts across all of them and runs deeply through them.

            So, in this season of Lent, I’m going to focus on my captivity to male supremacy, and I’m hoping that all of us will do so.  Such a focus will ask us to first celebrate the personhood and witness of women in our lives – particular women in our histories, and women in general in the life of humanity.  That’s what Women’s History Month is about.  Take some time this month to celebrate the women who have literally and figuratively given you life.  Take some time this month to celebrate those women whom you have never met, who have been witnesses for justice and equity for all of us, but especially for women. 

            Second, on the Lent part of the cycle, let us remember our captivity to patriarchy, which seeks to prevent all of us from celebrating the humanity and the equality and the witness of women.  This captivity permeates all of us, telling males that we are superior to women, and telling women that they are inferior to men.  It only takes a nanosecond for me to note how deeply captured I am by patriarchy.  And, in a world that is saturated with seeing women as bodies only, as property of men, these reminders of patiarchy are everywhere in my life.  In this intersection of Women’s History Month and Lent, I want to wrestle with my captivity to patriarchy and to continue to seek some liberation from it.  Women’s History Month helps me in this journey by lifting up women who have worked and struggled and screamed and fought and witnessed for the human dignity of women, and at the same time, offered a glimpse of liberation to us men who remain captive to male supremacy.

            So, I want to start with those women in my life who have given me a glimpse of the world that Black Jesus desires: a world where women are judged by the content of their character and not by the content of their bodies.  My mother Mary Stroupe was the primary witness, along with my great-great aunt Bernice Higgins (whom I called “Gran”) with whom we lived.  In those days, they would have said “no” to my characterization of them as feminists, but they were strong, independent women who refused in the end to be defined by men.  I was blessed to be raised by these women, with no men in the house.  There are many stories that I could share (and will someday), but the main value that they gave me was this:  compassion and community are at the heart of life.  In an affluent, American world so determined by money and males and the lying idea of independence, this was truly a great gift.

            Five other women in my life leap out at me:  My partner Caroline Leach has changed my life dramatically and deepened my commitment to equity for all, especially for women.  She and our daughter Susan Stroupe have helped me see the need to steadily resist the Forced Gestation and Forced Birth Movement (sometimes known as the anti-abortion movement).  I refuse to call it pro-life, because it does not care about life – when the baby is born, the FGFBM is ready to cut off all support for the baby.   No, the FGFBM has only one focus:  control of women’s bodies.

            Three other women are relatively new to my life, but they have influenced me so deeply:  daughter-in-law Erin Graham and granddaughters Emma and Zoe Stroupe.  I look forward to learning even more from them in the years that I have left.  And, of course, though he is not a woman, our son David, has been so important in receiving these values and growing them in his own way.  I am grateful to these seven women who have deepened me and helped me to begin to find some liberation from male supremacy.  There are many other women, of course, who have helped me to see the humanity of women and my continuing captivity.  In this season of Lent, so I am aware of my deep captivity, and I will be focusing on the intersection of the celebration of women and the ongoing struggle for liberation for all of us from the ideology of male supremacy.  I hope that you’ll join me in this journey in this season.