“We ask suffrage not as a favor, not as a privilege, but as a right based on the grounds that we are human beings and as such entitled to all human rights.”
Clara Shortridge Foltz, the lawyer whose speech advocating for poor defendants became the basis of publicly financed legal defense programs
“We ask suffrage not as a favor, not as a privilege, but as a right based on the grounds that we are human beings and as such entitled to all human rights,” she told the lawmakers in the state capital, Columbia. The U.S. Constitution did not define voters as male, she argued — therefore it was clear that women should also vote.
Thousands of American women like Rollin have courageously spoken in public throughout American history. Even when denied access to education, excluded from political roles and professions, and forbidden to speak from the pulpit, women still found ways to use their public voices. I used to wonder whether it was true that the “great men” in history gave all the greatest speeches. So I began an excavation project, searching for significant speeches by women. I searched through speech anthologies, transcripts, academic archives, out-of-print books, and old newspapers. What I discovered was a vast but little-known trove of public speeches by women.
Rollin and Foltz are just two among dozens of women who have changed our country through their public speech. What I’ve come to realize is that the absence of women’s speech from the historical record comes at a high cost to our lives today.
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