| Our thanks to the Womens Equality Coalition which provides great activities and programs throughout the year. This year is especially relevant: both the League of Women Voters organization and the Kansas City / Jackson / Clay and Platte County League also is 100 years old. The League is well represented by Alice Kitchen, one of the original organizers and Stacey Webb.
We also are celebrating 100 years of gaining the vote after decades, repeat, decades of hard work. Unfortunately the systemic racism that continues to plague our country was and in fact remains in place: it took the 1965 Voting Rights Act to give Black women the right to vote. Yet even today voters still face difficulties and any number of barriers to free and fair elections.
We have black and white photos of suffragettes marching for women's rights and it appears some things never change. Fortunately we have more comfortable shoes.
And the legislators are making it just as difficult for another common sense piece of legislation: the Equal Rights Amendment, which although introduced every year in Missouri, never makes it out of committee for a floor vote.
We have Pauline Testerman, who is a great League historian, who thought it would be a good idea to light up the Marriott, 200 W.12th St., and the Power and Light Building Apartments, 13th and Baltimore. Our thanks to Pauline for thinking out of the box - big time. Reminder to the photographers in the crowd, we have prizes for the best photos.
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