100 years ago today, the 19th amendment
100 years ago today, the 19th amendment to the constitution of the United States was certified, granting women the right to vote. However, this was only one important step in the very long journey towards our nation’s founding ideals, for despite passage of this amendment, minority females and minorities of all types continued to struggle to exercise their right to vote for decades.
50 years ago today, protests took place in more than 90 cities across the nation – the Women’s Strike for Equality – demonstrating that despite gaining the right to vote, other human and equal rights were still elusive for too many.
As we all witnessed, 1 week ago today, a black, Indian American woman accepted the Vice Presidential nomination of a major party, breaking new ground in American political history. It took far too long for this momentous occasion to occur, but was further testament to the long arc of the moral universe bending toward justice, and I’d add, equality. (Theodore Parker)
Recent events have shone a spotlight on the systemic injustices that continue to permeate our society. Each meaningful advance will need to be hard fought, and then fought over again, and again, in order to take root and enable the next step towards progress. We’ve witnessed how quickly momentous advancements can backtrack, even on such foundational concepts as voting rights.
Today, we hope to contribute a very small step towards addressing some of the entrenched systemic issues and circumstances, to help insure more equity in our financial system and enable fuller participation in our economy for female and minority and low-income entrepreneurs and business owners, all those that have been perpetually underbanked, underserved and underrepresented.
These small steps may never be commemorated in a constitutional amendment, but require all of us to seek solutions and work tirelessly to keep pressing the arc in the right direction.
