WOMEN: The march of progress

This is in response to the May 21 article regarding the excellent presentation on suffrage by Dr. Amy Canfield.

The 19th Amendment was certainly a landmark. It could guide you in your direction. But you still had to find a way through the ravines, over the dropoffs and across the rivers.

Except for the women we would now refer to as “A-Listers” (and they didn’t have the same conditions men of the same status had), things really didn’t change much.

Through the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, they had the same right as a man to vote for “Tweedle Dee” and “Tweedle Dum.”

In the ’60s, the tectonic pressure caused the ground to lurch.

To the strident females of today, I say this: It isn’t your tattoos and your streams of vulgarities that give you parity — and I am a free-speech advocate. It was the women of my generation marching in the streets, standing on picket lines and doing sit-ins.

Because of them, you have more choices than to be a nurse, a teacher, a secretary or a waitress.

MICHAEL DELCOMTE

Coeur d’Alene