When I was a teenager, my grandmother told me that her grandmother, “Nana,” marched for women’s suffrage.
What impressed my grandmother was not just that Nana walked the streets with throngs of other women clamoring for voting rights; it was that she did so despite being a woman who personally had little to gain from equal suffrage.
Nana was a married, middle-aged mother who, as my grandmother put it, “wore black chiffon at night.” In other words, she was a woman of means. As such, Nana benefited from the status quo. Practically speaking, she had reason to resist change. Still, she believed women should have the right to vote. So, she marched.
She also wrote.