Hear them roar

This Saturday, living-history volunteers will stage a women’s suffrage rally and parade through Old Sacramento in honor of Women’s History Month. Though this may seem like a quaint re-enactment of a faraway time when women were seen as inferior to men, it is worthwhile to consider that American women have only had the vote for 83 years. Many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers were born without suffrage. The political struggle for women’s right to vote spanned 72 years from its initial proposal to the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. The movement included jailing, hunger strikes and the forced feeding of strikers by police. The first political protesters ever to picket the White House were suffragettes holding signs that read, “Mr. President How Long Must Women Wait For Liberty?” The Equal Rights Amendment, which first was introduced to Congress in 1923 to ban discrimination on the basis of sex, has yet to be passed.

Pick up your skirts and march with the suffragettes Saturday at 11 a.m. The day’s events, including an 1840s fashion show and historical displays, will be centered around the landing at Jazzman’s Art of Pasta on Front Street between K and L streets. Call (916) 524-7249 for info.