Ah, it was the Roaring 20s, so what happened to make 100 years ago so very amazing? For one thing, some of the best American literature was written: Main Street by Sinclair Lewis; This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald and as well the emerging genius of Ernest Hemingway, who wrote the well-known short story, The Sun Also Rises.

The Roaring 20s was a period of economic prosperity that brought forth a culture known as the Jazz Age. Some of the women named themselves “Flappers” and sported bobbed hair and short skirts, who also smoked and drank, said what they thought and sometimes appeared unladylike.

It was post World War I, when soldiers returned from the war front in Europe. Business was booming. After the perils of war, Americans had money to spend, again. Many of the U.S. farm boys, who served as soldiers, had seen a part of the world previously unknown to them. The popular song, How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm after They’ve Seen Paree, has painted a cultural picture of the time.

When the boys left for war in 1917, their women wore long skirts and long hair rolled into a bun at the base of their necks but that was soon changed. America and the female population had exploded with change.

Then, also, of course, there were Prohibition and rise of the Mafia but the enlightenment of the “Free Woman” would turn America upside down with the signing of the 19th Amendment.

Yes, because women were needed during war-time to work the jobs men had filled before World War I, after the war they felt beyond the drudgery of just household work and looked toward to the future. Their main focus was the right to vote. When the women were needed in 1917, they stepped forward and accomplished great things on the home front while the men fought in Europe. Now, in 1920, it was time for their reward.

Enter women’s suffrage, with a vengeance.

It had been many years since the movement began; actually it was in 1848 when the first women’s rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York. The main players were Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone. I like to think they were gutsy gals and history proves just that.

It took almost 100 years for women to win the right to vote but the catalist, I think, was when U.S. women stepped forward in 1917. It was from that act of patriotism when women declared that they, like men, deserved all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship that moved forward the idea of reform.

For many years it was concluded, probably by men, that the “Cult of True Womanhood” was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family.

Ha! That thought process was put to the side quickly in 1917.

But from the 1848 beginnings until the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, women all across America marched, presented speeches, organized new groups and began what they termed a “Winning Plan,” which included hunger strikes, White House pickets and dramatic publicity such as marches down Pennsylvania Avenue in the nation’s capital, one of which on March 3, 1913, featured a woman clad in a white cape (not sure what was under it) astride a white horse.

“Thousands of women” marched along with Inez Miholland that day as she rode, with a straight back and ferociousness in her eyes. There were over 20 parade floats, nine bands and four mounted brigades on that windy day. Many of the parade attendees attacked the women. The police did little to help and when the parade ended, over 100 women were hospitalized.”

But the women did not give up.

So in this year of 2020, as you, the women of Mississippi, make your way to the polls, please remember these women with gratitude.

“No one who achieves success does so without the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.” –Alfred North

Anne B. McKee is a Mississippi historian, writer and storyteller. She is listed on the Mississippi Humanities Speakers Bureau and Mississippi Arts Commission’s Performing Artist and Teaching Artist Rosters. See her web site: www.annemckeestoryteller.com.