Left On Pearl

It's a long struggle, as the fight for women's suffrage shows...

Suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt tallied up U.S. women's efforts before the August 26, 1920 final passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. She counted:     "56 campaigns of referenda to male voters; 480 campaigns to urge Legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters; 47 campaigns to induce State constitutional conventions to write woman suffrage into State constitutions; 277 campaigns to persuade State party conventions to include woman suffrage planks; 30 campaigns to urge presidential party conventions to adopt woman suffrage... and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses to get the federal amendment submitted and ratified." - Cited in Carole Pateman, "Three Questions about Womanhood Suffrage, " in Caroline Daley and Melanie Nolan, ed., Suffrage and Beyond: International Feminist Perspectives. New York: New York University Press, 1994, 331-348, 332.  And this was not the end of the suffrage struggle, as most African-Americans in the southern U.S. did not get the vote until after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, partially gutted by the Roberts-led Supreme Court in 2013. Native Americans were finally authorized to vote by the Snyder Act of 1924. But because the Constitution left it up to the states to determine voting eligibility, it was only in 1962 that New Mexico became the last state to enfranchise Native Americans.  As we know, barriers to voting still exist and the trend in the U.S. is toward more, not fewer voting restrictions.

Upcoming Festivals and Screenings

LEFT ON PEARL is scheduled to screen at the Organization of American Historians Conference in New Orleans on April 7. The film has also been accepted to the Cinema Systers Festival in Paducah, Kentucky and is scheduled to screen on May 27 at 1pm, and to the Black Maria Film Festival, a traveling festival - dates and times TBA. For more updates as they happen, be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram - links at the bottom of this email.

Thank you for your support!   Thanks to all of you who have donated to the film. It's never too late to give. We still need funds to cover festival application fees, converting the film into the required Digital Cinema Package (DCP) exhibition format for festivals (very expensive!), and transportation to allow us to present at out-of-state festival screenings. We appreciate contributions of any size. To donate online or by check, click here.    The 888 Women's History Project   Libby Bouvier Susan K. Jacoby Susie Rivo Rochelle G. Ruthchild Cheryl Stein