Women’s suffrage celebrated with song
Singers from the Mendocino Women’s Choir held a small appropriately-masked and distanced outdoor gathering Aug. 29, to acknowledge the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage.
This year, our annual spring concert series at Eagles Hall was to be focused on the theme of women’s suffrage and the amazing contributions women make in all our daily lives. Many don’t realize that women invented many items we use and enjoy today, including car heaters, the game of Monopoly, Kevlar, the fire escape, the life raft, residential solar heating, the medical syringe, the dishwasher and wireless telecommunications technology are just some.
Here are a few of the songs we wanted to share with our community at the spring concerts:
• Bread and Roses, which started as a political slogan as well as the name of an associated poem and song.
• Sister Suffragette from Mary Poppins
• Justice and Mercy by Northern California singer-songwriter Harmony Grisman
• Sufferin’ for Suffrage from The School of Rock
The concert series was also to be dedicated to Margy Crowningshield, our dear friend, mentor, founding mother and musician extraordinaire who, along with Sharon Hansen, Cynthia Frank and Karin Faulkner, was inspired in 1992 to form a non-audition community women’s choir.
Well-known in our area for her rock ‘n’ roll/blues bands, musical theater, and piano and singersongwriter skills, Margy also brought us her kindness, love, impeccable rhythm, and wholehearted spirituality. Included in our program were two of Margy’s songs that reflect her spirituality and universal love. We share our dear absent friend’s desire to seek discoveries of our inner selves, as well as to spread healing, forgiveness, and joy to all.
It took 50 years and more than 900 proposals before Congress managed to pass the resolution to establish the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, and it wasn’t until 1965 that the Voting Rights Act was finally passed, outlawing discriminatory practices that had been keeping Black and other voters of color from the polls.
We thank all those women in long dresses and corsets, who marched by the thousands with banners and signs, and went door to door with petitions, ceaselessly organizing, many doing so most of their entire lifetimes.
We acknowledge that we have many more challenges in order to have full representation for all. Our Women’s Choir raises our voices for all that we are and all that we can be. We sing for others, for ourselves, for our country, and for a more complete, honorable, and loving world.
For more information, please visit mendocinowomenschoir.org