Bad Romance – Women’s Suffrage… A Lady Gaga Alice Paul Music Video Mashup

[niyad]

(with deepest thanks to du'er demmiblue for posting this amazing video!!)

Bad Romance – Women’s Suffrage… A Lady Gaga Alice Paul Music Video Mashup

96 years ago today, on August 18, 1920 the 19th Amendment was ratified. Six days later, on August 26, it was formally adopted into the U.S. Constitution, giving American women the right to vote after a seventy-two year battle. The driving force and lead strategist behind the influential 1910s suffrage campaigns that brought about its historic passage was Alice Paul (1885-1977), who is considered “the architect of some of the most outstanding political achievements on behalf of women in the 20th century.” Inspired by Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance, this parody music video pays tribute to her and the generations of brave women who fought for women’s suffrage and equal rights.

It’s important to note, that while the 19th Amendment states, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex,” universal suffrage for women was not actually achieved. Following its adoption into the Constitution, state laws and the continued use of vigilante practices at the state level like poll taxes, physical intimidation and violence, and literacy tests or educational requirements “effectively disenfranchised most black women in the South” until the Civil Rights Movement and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states (prior to the VRA, “federal laws did not challenge the authority of states and localities to establish and administer their own voting requirements”).

Alice Paul beyond the 19th Amendment… role model of leadership in the continuing quest for equality



While many suffragists left public life and activism after the 19th Amendment was enacted, Alice Paul believed the true battle for equality had yet to be won. As the Alice Paul Institute recounts, “In 1923, on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention, Paul announced that she would be working for a new constitutional amendment, one she authored and called the ‘Lucretia Mott Amendment.’ This amendment called for absolute equality stating, ‘Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.'” During the 1940s, “both the Republicans and Democrats added the Equal Rights Amendment to their party platforms. In 1943, the ERA was rewritten and dubbed the ‘Alice Paul Amendment.’ The new amendment read, ‘Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.'”

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was introduced in every session of Congress from 1923 until it passed in 1972 and went on to the states for ratification. The original seven-year time limit in the ERA’s proposing clause was extended by Congress to June 30, 1982, but at that deadline, the ERA had been ratified by 35 states, three states short of the 38 required to put it into the Constitution. The ERA has been introduced into every Congress since 1982, yet…

the Equal Rights Amendment is STILL NOT in the U.S. Constitution.

http://www.womenyoushouldknow.net/bad-romance-womens-suffrage-lady-gaga-alice-paul-music-video-mashup/