President's Message...
Greetings From Ginger: We've Come A Long Way!
Each
month I ponder what has been an important part of our history that has
significance at this time of year, and how it connects with us as women
and as educators. On April 20th, 1837 The State Board of Education, the
first in the United States, was established in Massachusetts. Could we
assume that this meant equal opportunities for Massachusetts' citizens?
We know this was not the case. In 1848, at Seneca Falls, New York
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott spearheaded the first women's
rights convention in American history. The Declaration of the
Seneca Falls Convention, using the model of the US Declaration of
Independence, forthrightly demanded that the rights of women as
right-bearing individuals be acknowledged and respected by society, and
this included the right to vote! It was signed by sixty-eight women and
thirty-two men. Mrs. Stanton continued to be a leader for women's
rights and in 1851 she met temperance worker Susan B. Anthony, and
shortly the two would be joined in the long struggle to secure the vote
for women. When national victory came in 1920, seventy-two years after
the first organized demand in 1848, only one signer of the Seneca Falls
Declaration had lived long enough to cast her ballot.
The Delta Kappa Gamma Society was founded in May 1929 by
Professor Annie Webb Blanton and eleven other women educators at the
Faculty Women's Club of the University of Texas in Austin. Through our
sisterhood, we continue the work started so many years ago, which is to
inform our members of current economic, social, political and
educational issues so that they may participate effectively in a world
society (Mission and Purpose: #7).
Ginger Deitz
3/26/2008
