Happy birthday, Susan B. Anthony.
You were born 185 years ago, on Feb. 15, 1820, a time without indoor plumbing or easy transportation, born when mail was delivered by Pony Express and the Wild West really was wild. Men were men, and women knew their place. Except for you.
While the Civil War raged over slavery, you worked to free African-Americans. Then you turned your energy to another freedom: women's right to vote. It finally happened, Susan, exactly 100 years after you were born, and you never got to cast a ballot. But you still changed history through your determination to change the rules. "Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about reform," you said. "Those who are really in earnest are willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation."
Today, you would be amazed to see a female California Congresswoman (Barbara Boxer) take on an African-American woman (Condoleezza Rice) in confirmation hearings for Secretary of State. And yet you would have shaken your head when Boxer was vilified for being "too tough" -- the press turned this woman-to-woman discussion of the most important issues of our day into a catfight. You knew that feeling well, as you were lampooned yourself. But you just kept moving.
In 1877, when you were 57 years old, you crisscrossed the country gathering petitions from 26 states with 10,000 signatures supporting a woman's right to vote. You appeared before every Congress for 37 years until your death in 1906, to argue for women's suffrage.
Abolitionist Horace Greeley, with whom you thought you had a social justice kinship, turned down your offer to join the women's rights movement with the American Anti-Slavery Society. He wrote that the women's vote was "so revolutionary and sweeping, so openly at war with a distribution of duties and functions between the sexes ... and involving transformation so radical in social and domestic" arenas that the public would not support it. Instead, Greeley's society took on what they saw as the more winnable fight: broadening the male vote to include immigrants and recently freed slaves.
The 19th amendment to the Constitution passed in 1920, giving us a right we still have not used in the way you envisioned: not only to vote for politicians who represent women's best interests, but to actually be those leaders. "There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers," you said. I know you would marvel on both sides of the world as it exists today: Yes, we finally have women in power, but we are half the population and only 14 percent of U.S. senators, almost half of whom come from three states -- Washington, California and Maine.
In 2004, women gained five spots in the House, so now we hold a measly 65 out of 435 seats. In our history, we have elected only 26 women governors, and we lost one in 2004. Over the past decade, women's leadership in state legislatures has hovered at 22 percent. Given these numbers, it is not surprising that almost 60 other countries have more women political leaders than we do.
Are you rolling over in your grave yet? I think not. If you were alive today, you would build on this pathetic base, looking for victory in every small town. You would be the voice that convinced uncertain women to run for office. You would run yourself, and even if you lost, you would push and push and push your progressive ideals. You are a woman for whom the old English definition of courage truly applies: To speak your mind by telling all your heart. By the way, you're a coin now. It's a Susan B. Anthony dollar. "But so what?" you'd say. There are elections to run and issues to fight.
Under the circumstances, there is only one gift we can give you on your birthday: We promise to encourage women to step forward and lead. Many of us can't go from town to town as you did, but we have something you didn't: the cell phone. We promise that today, almost 200 years after you were born, we will call our friends and our daughters and our sisters and our mothers who always thought they'd make a good school board president or senator but just didn't know where to begin. We will be that beginning. Can you hear me now?
Marie C. Wilson is president of The White House Project, a national nonpartisan organization dedicated to advancing women in leadership (www.thewhitehouseproject.org), and author of "Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World" (Viking/Penguin, 2003). This column was produced for the Progressive Media Project, which is run by The Progressive magazine, and distributed by the Tribune News Service.