As we celebrate Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day in the month of March the words of Mrs. King speak to me about how we can take inspiration from the wise women who came before us.  Coretta King’s vision of the role of women in making our country and world a better place remains a challenge to which we all should respond.  I think we need to face the fact that, though the UU feminist foremothers provide a positive legacy, we all have fallen short of completing the mission they and Coretta King imagined for us.

Unitarian Universalist women have often lead and shaped the struggle for equality.  In 1863 Olympia Brown became the first women to complete formal theological training and earn ordination as a Universalist minister. Suffrage leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton gained inspiration from her association with the Unitarian Church of her time.  We can take pride that the UU heritage includes so many of the feminist foremothers while knowing that much that still needs to be done to realize true equality.
         
Sadly, women remain the victims of discrimination and abuse.  I am the proud son of a strong mother, the brother of a powerful sister, the husband of an activist for justice, the father of young women on the move and the grandfather of a girl that has the right to be who she wants to be free from male dominance or aggression. Yet I know the struggle continues.
         
I look to my faith, my spiritual home, and our congregation full of dynamic women, to lead and guide me in my quest to be a better ally and advocate for equality.  I want to hear and understand your voices, your witness, and your power so as to strengthen me and other men to be equal partners in the march towards a world free from oppression.
         
Coretta Scott King was right.  Creating change requires all of us to strive for the ideal of one world, with one destiny, joined together from material and spiritual necessity.  Let’s work together as sisters and brothers, parents, teachers, students, partners and friends, all committed to a positive human enterprise, with lives committed to love. 
 

For info about UU women in history see Notable Universalist and Unitarian Women: www.uuwhs.org/notable/index.html
For info on women’s history - The National Women’s History Museum:
www.nwhm.org
 

 
 
 

 

In order to see where we are going, we not only must remember where we have been, but we must understand where we have been.

Ella Baker, civil rights activist (Learn more about Baker at: http://ellabakercenter.org)

 
March is Women’s History Month because International Women’s Day is celebrated on March.  The tradition of holding Women’s Day began over a century ago when women in the pre-World War I socialist movement garnered support for a special day to recognize and honor the role of women in building a better world. 
 
As a historian, I have had the good fortune to be trained, to teach and to write at a time when women have been included and emphasized by historians working today.  It isn’t easy to write women back into the stories and circumstances of the past because, until recent centuries, women were not in a social position to preserve their own records, nor were they recognized in the official annals and archives from which most history is written.  A broader recognition of sources, including oral traditions and social history, has foregrounded the lives of women through the work they did and letters, diaries and other records that have been preserved.  Women and men involved with the teaching of history are now motivated to tell all of the human story in their teaching and writing, which means that the contributions and complications of the lives of women are finally being given their due.
 
Ella Baker knew that knowing and understanding where we’ve been is essential to the establishment of equality and justice for all.  At the March 7 Movie Night (6 pm, as listed in the calendar) we will be showing Suffragette (2015), which tells the story of the struggle for women’s rights and enfranchisement in Britain.  Please join us then to celebrate women and the work of the suffragettes in the struggle for justice.
 

See trailer at http://suffragettethemovie.com/#landing/home