March is Women's History Month, (also celebrated in October in Canada "declaring that women were to be considered persons under the law. While women being persons seems pretty obvious today, it was not so in the past. Included in these resources: the 2004 Canada's official government site on Women's History Month, including posters, articles, and more." Jone Johnson Lewis)
Wikipedia: "March Women's History is an annual declared month in the United States. The event traces its beginnings to the first International Women's Day in 1911. In 1978 in California, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women began a "Women's History Week" celebration. The week was chosen to coincide with International Women's Day, March 8. Congress legally expanded the focus to a whole month in 1987."
From the National Women’s History Project (NWHP): "To honor the originality, beauty, imagination, and multiple dimensions of women’s lives, we have chosen Women’s Art: Women’s Vision as the 2008 theme for National Women’s History Month.
The history of women and art is quintessential women’s history. It is the story of amazing women’s accomplishments acclaimed at the time but written out of history. Join us in ensuring that their accomplishments are never forgotten.
This year’s theme provides a special opportunity to discover and celebrate women’s visual arts in a variety of forms and mediums that help expand our perceptions of ourselves and each other."
On a personal note; Binding Ink somehow missed President Bush's acknowledgment about March being Women's History Month. However; I did read:
The White House: "NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 2008 as Irish-American Heritage Month. I call upon all Americans to observe this month by celebrating the contributions of Irish Americans to our Nation.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-ninth day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-second.
GEORGE W. BUSH"
Nonetheless; with February ending this years' Black History Month, let us not forget: slavery no more, let freedom of equality forever soar, as we proceed on to celebrate Women and Irish-American Heritage. And so in keeping with this years' Women's History Month theme, may all remember the artful poetic truthful, heartfelt words of Mary Birkett Card, as we journey toward achieving Peace in a World United humanely in Humanity:
Role of women in the anti-slavery movement: "The role of women in the campaign is remarkable because this was a section of the population still disenfranchised, yet they played an important role in one of the key social reforms in history. Women abolitionists who were active in the 1820s and 1830s, such as Elizabeth Heyrick (1769-1831), Anne Knight (1786-1862) and Elizabeth Pease (1807-1897) are well-known. But there were many Quaker women in the 1780s and 1790s who gave their support and campaigned, including Mary Birkett Card (1774-1817), Amelia Opie (1769-1853), Mary Morris Knowles (1773-1807). When the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was set up in 1787 it was an exclusively male organisation, yet its lists of subscribers included several women.
Women brought a distinctive female approach to the campaign, such as writing and circulating imaginative literature and poetry on slavery, such as A Poem on the African Slave Trade. Addressed to her own sex written in 1792 by Mary Birkett Card...
Women wore the medallion designed by Josiah Wedgwood as jewellery to show their support, and later adapted it to show a kneeling female with the words "Am I not a Woman and a Sister?". As the main purchasers of sugar they came to play an important role in the sugar boycott."
Brycchan Carey's Website: "In 1792, Mary Birkett, a Dublin Quaker, published A Poem on the African Slave Trade. Addressed to her own Sex. in two parts. The poem is noteworthy for the way in which it urges other women to boycott slave produced goods (sugar and rum) in protest against slavery.
Mary’s poem was written at a particular juncture in the abolition campaign. Publication of Parts I and II may have coincided with the passage of the 1792 Abolition Bill through the House of Commons in April and the Lords in May/June – Part II contains an address to members of the House of Lords. At this point, George Harrison published an Address to the Right Reverend the Prelates of England and Wales on the Subject of the Slave Trade. Furthermore, by 1792 abstention had really come into its own as an abolitionist tactic. In 1791, William Fox, a Baptist, had published An Address to the People of Great Britain on the Propriety of Abstaining from West Indian Sugar and Rum. Other pamphlets advocating abstention were published or reprinted in Dublin in 1792. Thousands gave up sugar in their tea and boycotted other slave-produced goods, including people Mary knew in Ireland. One original contribution of her poem is the way she appeals to women’s sense of solidarity as ‘sisters’, utilising the contemporary construction of ‘woman’ as the tender sex to argue that this sensibility, far from excusing inaction, entails greater responsibility. Women are not innocent or powerless - they have an 'important share’ in causing slaves’ suffering through their own consumption, and power to effect change by refusing slave-produced goods and influencing their menfolk to do the same."
( 4 )A Poem on the African Slave Trade
To our first parents when th'Almighty Cause
Reveal'd his holy will - his hallow'd laws;
When from his lips the wondrous accents broke,
And mortals listen'd while the Godhead spoke;
In that mysterious moment did he say? -
" Man shall his fellow ravage, sell, and slay;
" And one unhappy race shall always be
" Slave to another’s pamper'd luxury."
There are, I know, who think and more who say,
That not so injur’d - so opprest are they;
That under master’s just they earn their bread,
And plenty crowns the board at which they're fed.
Ah, sophist, vain thy subtle reas'ning’s aim!
Look at the Negro’s sun-burnt, grief-worn frame!
Examine well each limb, each nerve, each bone,
Each artery - and then observe thy own;
The beating pulse, the heart that throbs within,
All, (save the sable tincture of his skin,)
Say, Christians, do they not resemble you?
If so, their feelings and sensations too:
One moment now with you his burthen rest,
Then tell me, is he happy - is he blest?
Mary Birkett Card (1774-1817)
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W.P.L.I. (Women's History Month, Peace, Love, Irish)
