Southern Indiana Business July-August 2020 | Page 46

The sunflower was adopted as a symbol of the women’s suffrage movement, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote under the pen name “Sunflower.”
News and Tribune file photo
The Last Word: Courage
It seemed appropriate as I step away from being
editor of Southern Indiana Business magazine that
I have The Last Word. So I took it.
There was never a discussion about other options
because I didn’t allow it to be entertained.
Such is my management style. I sometimes wish it were
more inclusive. At other times, the decisiveness is a clear
plus.
Command and control, as the military puts it, results in
mission accomplished.
Time has taught me, though, to factor into the equation
a third “c” — compassion. It’s what makes the journey to
completion worthwhile.
We are most effective when we care about what we are
doing and the people affected by our actions.
We see it in the change that is resulting since people
have taken to the streets to protest racial injustice and
inequality.
Our marching predecessors — those women of the suffrage
movement we are celebrating at the century mark of
their voting rights attainment — understood all too well
the repercussions of their activism.
But they persisted, and persevered.
So must we.
Sexism and racism cut parallel paths through our consciousness,
relegating women and blacks to a fate of property
valued or abused.
They for too long were denied a seat at the very table
they set.
There was a time when the mention of rights of any
kind for them would have drawn a quick scoff and rebuke.
But we kept reaching for equality, and continue to do
so today, standing on the shoulders of those who came
before.
Famed women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton
knew what it took to succeed:
“The best protection any woman can have … is
courage.”
Cady Stanton and her counterparts believed in equality,
the peril of which be damned. It didn’t matter. There was
a greater good to be had.
Others would follow when those early pioneers were
laid to rest. Equality is a just cause for all of humanity,
no matter the gender, the skin color, the place of origin,
the self-identification, the orientation … none of it is a
disqualifier.
However, equality still is denied by those who never felt
the sting of its absence.
Much like the suffragettes who raised their signs and
their voices and marched for a cause, demonstrators today
seek justice and equality, sometimes at their own peril.
They embody the courage of which Cady Stanton spoke.
Join them. Find the courage to speak your truth.
— Susan Duncan
46 July / August 2020