NEWS & OPINION COLUMN
THE SUFFRAGIST
Pg. 11 APR 22 - MAY 5, 2020 - QCNERVE.COM
A TALE OF TWO PANDEMICS
as early as the 1820s. So, by the time WWI began, not only had a century passed since then, but the women from the NWP had for more than two years stood in How the 1918 flu pandemic front of the White House as “Silent Sentinels” played into women’s suffrage enduring periodic torture. Still, all Wilson managed to say in support of the 19th Amendment was, “…we have made BY RHIANNON FIONN partners of the women in this war … Shall we In the nineteen teens, when duty called soldiers admit them only to a partnership of suffering to war and a flu pandemic was killing entire and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of families, women worldwide stepped up and took privilege and right?” Unlike our current president, with his nearon many roles traditionally held by men. However, by the time both of those nightmares began, young daily, ultra-long and self-focused press briefings, American women in the National Women’s Party Wilson didn’t have much to say about the flu (NWP) — including North Carolina’s Gertrude Weil pandemic. Of course, he was focused on WWI, — had yanked the helm of the suffrage movement which the United States entered on April 6, 1917. away from their elders who had spent decades A year later, the first incidence of what would trying to bargain with Congress. Then they turned later (inaccurately) be referred to as the Spanish flu showed up at a military camp in Kansas, up the heat. according to the Yet they still U.S. Centers for were not taken Disease Control seriously a century (CDC). after the call for The reason women’s suffrage that virus began. It took wasn’t called World War I and the Kansas Flu nearly 700,000 is because our flu-related deaths president, and in the U.S. alone leaders of other before President countries involved Woodrow Wilson in World War I, offered support didn’t want to take for the 19th people’s attention Amendment. away from the P r e v i o u s l y, war effort so they I wrote in “The tried to keep the Suffragist” that the lid on flu news. It’s push to amend the PSA CIRCA NOV. 1918 called the Spanish U.S. Constitution began in the mid-1840s. I was corrected by a Flu because the media in Spain, which wasn’t then Civics 101 podcast from New Hampshire Public tangled in war, could tell the truth. Even here in Charlotte, public officials and Radio featuring Professor Martha Jones of John medical professionals misled the public about the Hopkins University. According to her forthcoming devastation, as Mark Washburn explained recently book, Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote and Fought for Rights for All, African- in his article in The Charlotte Observer showing American women like Maria Stewart were speaking how even the city’s newspapers downplayed that to audiences and writing manifestos about suffrage pandemic.
backs of those working feverishly behind sewing machines and 3D printers making cloth masks, gowns, face shields and other accoutrements for medical professionals, other frontline workers and high-risk individuals. We see it in the men and women running cash registers in checkout lines and delivering our food. Now there’s a new suffrage battle in front of us: mail-in voting, something the leadership of the N.C. General Assembly, which returns to session April 28, has already said they’re not interested in (read Mary’s column to my left for more on that). For the coming battles we all need to focus and work hard, while also pacing ourselves and practicing self-care and physical distancing so that we, too, don’t succumb to COVID-19, our new viral enemy. “When people died during the 1918-1920 influenza pandemics — yes, there were multiple waves (and we can expect multiple waves of COVID-19) — due to a variety of reasons, a cause of death was not listed,” WOMEN WORKERS’ WW1 POSTER. wrote Perry in an email stacked from floor to ceiling, taking home the bodies explaining why accurate numbers for deaths in of young soldiers who never saw the war,” wrote Charlotte during the flu pandemic aren’t available. “Keep in mind that the flu pandemic didn’t end Harry McKown in a University of North Carolina article entitled “North Carolina and the ‘Blue Death’.” in November 1918. In fact, although the city lifted According to UNC Charlotte associate professor the quarantine at the end of October 1918, they had Dr. Heather Perry, “There was the same uproar about to put the city schools and other areas back under closed businesses and loss of income at that time. quarantine in December because there had been People resisted the quarantine and there was a lot of such a resurgence of cases. In Char-Meck, people pushback against the public health measures which were still getting sick regularly and dying until well were implemented to help stop the spread — into 1919,” says Perry. That is why mail-in voting is of utmost usually because people did not like being told what to do or because they chose personal economic importance during a presidential election, because concerns over public health ones. So, of course, that both scientists and historians like Perry are saying is one reason why the flu was so bad in Charlotte.” the same thing: Viruses don’t adhere to our timelines; In the meantime, women got to work, as they we bend to theirs. They can change everything, and are wont to do. That same proactive determination they don’t care about our hard-earned rights — so to help during crisis, to do whatever must be done, is we must be smarter than them. evidenced today in the faces of the pregnant nurses worrying in news reports. We see it on the hunched INFO@QCNERVE.COM Meanwhile, the virus began to do what viruses do: replicate and invade every available host lacking immunity, leading to a death toll that would exceed 50 million worldwide, depending on your source. “Soldiers in crowded training camps were especially vulnerable. At the railroad station that served Camp Greene near Charlotte coffins were
