Still Standing

“Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you. Galatians 5:1 Msg

“I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

Fannie Lou Hamer

Women’s Suffrage celebrated 100 years in 2020. It commemorated the right for women to vote. Truth is only white women were given the right to vote and black women had to wait and watch for decades from the sideline. On March 3, 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson’s presidential inauguration, more than 5,000 women gathered in Washington D.C. for a “suffrage parade” demanding the right to vote. But when black activist Mary Church Terrell proposed that black women join the march the rug was pulled from under her. Alice Paul the organizer worried about the reaction of white Southern women offered a compromise: black women could march at the back. Many including Ida B. Well-Barnett defied Paul and walked alongside their white counterparts. When the 19th Amendment became law in 1920 giving women the right to vote, it did not include black women who worked hard in the suffrage movement. It took until The Voting Rights Act of 1965 for black women to get the right to vote.

Black women have fought, marched, cooked, raised babies, prayed, contributed money, compromised, and served everyone in their fight to obtain recognition and rights. Time after time we have been told to wait for our turn, but we are still standing. We can no longer compromise. We will strategize to press forward to reach the prize that has always been our from our God. We can not grow weary in doing good for in due season we will reap our harvest if we do not faint.

Women take your stand! Keep fighting, loving, speaking, marching, and voting! Change will come! Rosa Parks the mother of civil rights took her stand and said: “I would like to be known as a person who is concerned about freedom and equality and justice and prosperity for all people.”

Prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, we your Black daughters cry out to you for Your protection and power and to renew our strength. Bless us to stand strong in the midst of evil times. Give us all we need to be the leaders You have called us to be in our homes, communities, churches, and government. Cause us to rise and move beyond glass ceilings created to keep us compromising. Let us be remembered as warriors who demand justice and equality for all. We stand on Your promises and call it done. Amen. © 2020 Dr. John Ogletree – Houston, TX