Votes for Women

Dear Diary,

I didn't make it to Tamworth, NH for the Harvest Festival but I did attend a presentation at our local historical society.  I use to curate the exhibitions before I "retired" from it a couple of years ago.  I had suggested an exhibit, "Her-Story" (a take on "his-tory") and they did it this year.  It was appropriate as 2019 was the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in Maine.  The amendment to the Constitution finally passed in 2020.  It gave universal suffrage to women in America.  I'm highlighting the story of Maine senator, Margaret Chase Smith, a woman I greatly admire.  She was a freshman Republican senator in 1950 when she gave a powerful speech on the senate floor aimed towards fellow Republican, Joseph McCarthy.  She admonished the Republican Party's hopes for political "victory through the selfish political exploitation of fear, bigotry, ignorance and intolerance."  Smith stated that accusers "who shout the loudest about Americanism ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism, the right to criticize, to hold unpopular beliefs, to protest, the right of independent thought.It is high time that we stopped thinking politically as republicans and democrats about elections and started thinking patriotically as Americans about national security based on individual freedom."  The speech was entitled, A Declaration of Conscience.  We could use a Margaret Chase Smith in Washington now.