Nevertheless, She Persisted

As I read Jennifer Chiaverini’s “The Women’s March: A Novel of the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession,” I repeated the words of the writer of Ecclesiastes: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again, there is nothing new under the sun.” In the United States of America, who should be able to vote? In 1870, the fifteenth amendment prohibited restrictions of voting based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. In 1913, the issue was voting rights for women.In 1965, despite the previous amendments, voting rights for all people but especially for people of color were at risk. Now, in 2022, as debate for a federal standard of protection for voting rights is at stake, there remains “nothing new under the sun.”

 

One of the themes in Chiaverini’s book revolves around the dilemma faced by suffragists of the day: should they attempt to work in the states to change the laws surrounding access to the voting booth for women, or should there be a national response to the concerns of the day? Sound familiar? Similar discussions began long before the constitution was written, and continue to this day. Should the right to vote and to access those voting rights depend on whether we live in a free or slave state, a state that rejects or accepts women’s suffrage, or a blue or red state? Where is the line between states’ rights and the protection of rights for all Americans? 

 

Those opposed to suffrage for women little more than a hundred years ago had many excuses as to why the fairer sex shouldn’t be able to vote. But ultimately, limiting access to voting, both historically and in the present day, seems to have one goal: to keep power in fewer hands. I, for one, am grateful that the heroines of “The Women’s March” persisted. Seems like that kind of persistence may be needed just as much today as it was when women marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in 1913. 

Connecting the Dots: The 1619 Project

It began with Nancy Drew, my obsession with writers, especially in the genre of mystery. Agatha Christie wrote sixty-six detective novels, and Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot kept me company through my teen years. I’ve read through Sue Grafton’s alphabet series, stopping at “Y is for . . .” only because the author died before she competed the twenty-sixth book. Recently, I’ve fallen under the spell of Jacqueline Winspear (Maisie Dobbs) and Louise Penny (Armand Gamache), but I’m caught up until they publish another book. Keep writing, sisters!

 

Thus, I was pleased to get a recommendation for Ann Cleeves, a British writer with three mystery series featuring Vera Stanhope, Jimmy Perez and Matthew Venn. Bringing home a stack of library books, I took advantage of the slower pace of another COVID-19 post-Christmas lull to read a number of her offerings.

 

At the bottom of that same library pile sat a hefty volume, waiting for me to find the courage to open its pages. “The 1619 Project: A New Origins Story,” began as a feature of the New York Times Magazine, created under the direction of Nicole Hannah-Jones. Now, it’s published in a book of essays, with poetry, photos and historical nuggets woven through its pages. How I wish this painful account was fiction. 

 

The initial Times Magazine supplement carefully documented the lives of Black persons in America since the White Lion dropped anchor off the Jamestown, Virginia shores in 1619. Now, the book fleshes out the historical, political, economic and sociological influences that shaped a people whose identity has been described as 3/5’s of a person, slaves and enslaved persons, Negro and Black, captive and freed. 

 

It’s been difficult to read the words on its pages, and in recent days, I’ve set it aside to escape for a few hours back into Vera Stanhope’s tenacious detective work and bacon sandwiches. But I’ve returned again and again, to read of the power and pain of sugar, of enslavers who called for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for themselves but not for their property, and of families torn apart, bodies broken, and a people stripped of their heritage and their freedom. 

 

As I’ve been reading, hundreds of faces have joined me. The historical images of Harriet and Ida; and those like Medgar and Martin, John and Rosa who’ve lived and died within my lifetime. The Obama family, living in a white house. Teen girls in my cabin at Long Point Camp; Mrs. Butler from East Falls; Mrs. Clemons at the front desk of the Hough Center in Cleveland; Jon and Cornell living on the third floor of our 12^thStreet house; my four-year-old son and his friend Armand. Faces reflected in candlelight vigils, in silent grief. On the pages of this new origin story, I see you.

 

Once I close the pages of a mystery, I may not remember who the butler killed in the library with a candlestick, but when I close the pages of The 16`9 Project, I will remember. Images of the White Lion in Jamestown, the Middle Passage, a New Orleans slave market, Jim Crow laws, fire hoses and snarling dogs, the Edmund Pettus Bridge will remain. 

 

Perhaps the 1619 Project is not all that different from my beloved mysteries. Just as Maisie, Armand, Vera and their compatriots shed light on what is happening around them, so too does the 1619 Project.  James Baldwin once said, “People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.” By carefully connecting many dots of a frequently hidden history, I can hear the sounds of traps being released, of new songs being sung, one plaintive note at a time.