League of Women Voters marks century at its birthplace
Group endorses ERA drive, delivers belated celebration of Ida B. Wells
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, and U.S. Reps. Robin Kelly and Sean Casten celebrate the 100th anniversary of the League of Women Voters alongside a cake honoring Ida B. Wells. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
CHICAGO — The League of Women Voters celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding on Friday in the very “room where it happened” a century ago.
“This morning we are gathered in the room where it happened,” said Allyson Haut, president of the League of Women Voters of Illinois, in addressing hundreds of members and supporters in the Gold Room of the Congress Plaza Hotel, where Carrie Chapman Catt led organization of the national grassroots group on Feb. 14, 1920.
The organization celebrated its past, in part by granting belated recognition to Chicago activist Ida B. Wells, who like other African Americans was not welcome in the original league. It also looked ahead to the future by renewing the drive for the Equal Rights Amendment to be ratified.
Audra Wilson, executive director of the Illinois branch, readily acknowledged the organization was initially less than welcoming to “suffragettes of color,” but she also insisted that things had changed, and much of the centennial celebration was devoted to praising Wells.
“We must honor women like Ida B. Wells with our vote in this critical election year, and we must never forget the women upon whose shoulders we stand,” said Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton in addressing the organization. “Women’s health, safety, access to economic opportunity, and yes our right to vote is under constant threat across this nation.”
U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth applauded the league for “a century of hard work, of progress, of making sure that our democracy ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ includes all the people, regardless of something like gender or skin color.”
Joined onstage by a sign-language interpreter, Sen. Tammy Duckworth delivers remarks to the League of Women Voters of Illinois in the Gold Room of the Congress Plaza Hotel. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle praised the league for the way it has expanded its mission throughout the last century, taking on issues like the death penalty, fair housing, and education funding. Congressman Bill Foster of Naperville pointed out how the U.S. House only Thursday passed a resolution removing the 1982 deadline for the ERA to be ratified, potentially clearing the way for it to become the 28th Amendment if the Senate follows suit. Foster said it would be “making gender discrimination flatly unconstitutional.”
“I hope the Senate will follow,” said Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, but he also cited a lawsuit he’s already filed calling for the national archivist to formally recognize the ERA as the 28th Amendment, after Virginia recently became the 38th state to ratify. Illinois and Nevada also recently joined in approving the ERA well after the 1982 deadline had passed, but Raoul’s suit, filed with his counterparts in those states, argues that other amendments have been added without facing a deadline, including the most recent 27th Amendment limiting congressional pay raises.
“If it took 200 years to ratify the 27th Amendment, we have ratified the 28th Amendment,” he insisted.
Raoul and others, however, also praised the league for its consistent defense of the right to vote, which Raoul called “the one right upon which the security of all other rights rests.” He added, “It is now more important than ever to defend voting rights and prevent disinformation and voter suppression.”
Haut closed the hourlong ceremony with a call to action on three issues this year: the ERA, the 2020 Census and the legislative maps that will follow, and a get-out-the-vote drive for the Illinois primary next month and the general election in November.
“We are putting an end to gerrymandering once and for all,” Haut said, pointing to a May 3 deadline for the General Assembly to approve putting a “fair maps” referendum on the ballot in the fall.
Haut echoed a familiar League of Women Voters line in saying the group represents “a mighty political experiment,” and she insisted it’s “still going strong,” with fights for voting rights, as well as delivering the information voters need to make informed decisions, including candidate forums across the state in races all up and down the ballot.
“The league is a nonpartisan organization because the right to vote is not a partisan issue,” added Wilson.
Michelle Duster, Wells’s granddaughter, who successfully led recent efforts to rename Congress Parkway in Chicago as Ida B. Wells Drive, said a monument to the civil-rights activist is being finished and should be ready for dedication a year from now on the site of the former Chicago Housing Authority projects named after her in the city’s Bronzeville neighborhood.
“It says something that as the size of the league grew through the years, so too did the breadth of its mission and the depth of its commitment,” Duckworth said. “You’ve fought for affordable education and fair housing. You’ve worked day and night for reproductive rights, for campaign finance reform, for clean air and water. You’ve gone to picket line after picket line to fight back against voter suppression. And through it all, you’ve risked safety and security, withstood hypocrisy and misogyny, refusing to stay silent so that your daughters and your daughters’ daughters could inherit the democracy they deserve.
“For that, I’m forever grateful,” she added, “and for that, America is forever in your debt.”