Celebrate Women’s Equality Day and See Suffragette in Theaters October #Suffragette

To show your support and to celebrate this momentous occasion, wear the colors of suffrage today  – purple, for dignity and ability, green for hope, and white for purity!

Lucy Stone (1818-1893) An eloquent speaker, founder of the American woman Suffrage Association and leading spirit in New En gland, Stone published and edited the influential weekly, The Woman’s Journal, for 21 years.

Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) Symbol of the suffrage movement, Anthony was a strategist with sharp political instincts, the driving force behind the National Woman Suffrage Association, and single minded champion of a federal amendment.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) Brilliant women’s rights leader and forceful writer, Stanton authored the 1848 “Declaration of Sentiments” declaring “all men and women are created equal.” She and Anthony were political partners for 50 years.

Sojourner Truth (c.1797-1883) born into slavery, Isabella Van Wagener changed her name in 1843 and began preaching against slavery and for women’s rights. She is best remembered for her dramatic “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech at the 1851 Woman’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio

Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947) With Anthony, Catt reorganized the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1890, and then unified the movement in 1916 with her secret “Winning Plan.” Catt called for the formation of a League of Women Voters in 1919.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) Wells-Barnett founded the first suffrage club of African-American women, the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago. She marched in the 1913 Washington, D.C. parade and led a contingent of Black suffragists in the famous 1916 Chicago parade.

Alice Paul (1885-1977) Chief strategist of the militant wing, Paul founded the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage and the National Woman’s Party. Organizer of the White House pickets in 1917, she was jailed three times and force-fed. Paul authored the Equal Rights Amendment.

Nina Otero-Warren (1881-1965) Her fluency in Spanish and English persuaded women in New Mexico to become suffrage activists through the militant Congressional Union, of which she was the advisory council’s vice president.

 

 Academy Award nominees Carey Mulligan and Helena Bonham Carter, and three-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep, lead the cast of a powerful drama about the women who were willing to lose everything in their fight for equality in early-20th-century Britain. The stirring story centers on Maud (played by Carey Mulligan), a working wife and mother whose life is forever changed when she is secretly recruited to join the U.K.’s growing Suffragette movement. Galvanized by the outlaw fugitive Emmeline Pankhurst (Meryl Streep), Maud becomes an activist for the cause alongside women from all walks of life. When increasingly aggressive police action forces Maud and her dedicated fellow Suffragettes underground, they engage in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with the authorities, who are shocked as the women’s civil disobedience escalates and sparks debate across the nation.

Inspired by true events, “Suffragette” is a moving drama exploring the passion and heartbreak of those who risked all they had for women’s right to vote – their jobs, their homes, their children, and even their lives. The film also stars Ben Whishaw, Anne-Marie Duff, Brendan Gleeson, Romola Garai, and Natalie Press. “Suffragette” is directed by BAFTA Award winner Sarah Gavron from an original screenplay by Abi Morgan.