Happy New Year!
As we enter this pivotal year, I wanted to share this quick story (another excerpt from “Saving Democracy”):
Meet Rhoda Denison Bement.
She was at Seneca Falls. But it’s complicated.
Rhoda Denison Bement was actually a regular parishioner at the Wesleyan Methodist Church, where the historic convention took place. But she was only a member there because, five years earlier, she’d been banished from the Presbyterian church down the street. At one point, the ferocity of her abolitionist advocacy erupted into a showdown with that church’s pastor, who put her on trial for disorderly and “unchristian” conduct. She was found guilty, banished, and soon joined the church that would host the women’s rights convention a few years later.
Now let’s take a moment and look at the long arc of Rhoda Denison Bement’s life, and the lives of her fellow suffragists.
Born in 1806, she was kicked out of that first church in 1843. Only thirty-seven years old, but so fierce about abolishing slavery she was banished from an abolitionist church. Impressive.
The historic convention at her new church home took place in 1848, when she was forty-two years old.
She would then spend the rest of her eighty-two years as both a conductor of the Underground Railroad and an advocate for women’s suffrage. She died in 1888.
The 19th Amendment wasn’t ratified until 1920.
So, Rhoda Denison Bement spent her entire life raising hell for suffrage she would never see, and that America’s women wouldn’t gain for another thirty-two years after her death.
Now think about the generation that followed her in the movement. Consider the teenagers who watched or read about that 1848 convention. Those women would’ve been in their fifties at the time of Bement’s death, and more than likely also did not live to see the 19th Amendment ratified.
Only the next generation of the movement—the teenagers at the time of Bement’s death—would live to see that historic victory in 1920. Most of them, at least. They would have reached their fifties and sixties when they first exercised their right to vote.
Think about that again: Rhoda Denison Bement, her predecessors, peers, and even the generation of women that followed her dedicated entire lifetimes of struggle to join America’s democracy. These would be lifetimes of disappointment, at least in terms of achieving their ultimate goal. Still, they kept fighting. Only the final generation of that movement, building on the foundations of those who’d endeavored and passed away years before, would experience their joint, multi-generational victory.
You may be asking, why do I know so much about Rhoda Denison Bement?
I’ve known about her for decades. You see, I hail from a long, uninterrupted line of fierce feminists. And Rhoda Denison Bement led the way. She was my great-great-great-great-grandmother. One of my nieces is named Rhoda; another’s middle name is Bement.
As proud as we are of that lineage, I know there are countless Americans just like Rhoda Denison Bement, who waged their own struggles for freedom and equality that only future generations would inherit.
Even after the Civil War and abolition—and long after the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments—it took generations of similar heroes to overcome horrific violence to cement civil rights protections into our nation’s laws. It took another generation after that to convince leaders and courts to actually enforce those laws. Again, like Bement, entire lifetimes of struggle. Many ending in disappointment, never to see progress. And countless lives cut short violently amid that struggle.
John Lewis was one of the fortunate heroes who lived to witness the fruits of generations of action and sacrifice, including his own. But even when John Lewis passed away, some of those fruits were wilting before his eyes. Things were going the other way.
What’s the lesson from Rhoda Denison Bement’s life and legacy, and so many others like her?
It’s that the battle for democracy is a long one.
It’s not about a single election. Or a single politician. Or even elections alone. It’s not limited to individual lifetimes, or even multiple generations.
And no, it’s not an inevitable arc bending in one positive and inevitable, morally righteous direction. It’s always contested—pushing one way for years, then back the other way for years more. If and how it bends comes down to who’s pushing harder, longer.
It’s a never-ending battle. And it continues today.
Which means we are in that same battle now.
If you subscribe to my newsletter because you’re concerned about the state of our democracy, the most important takeaway is to see that you are in the same struggle Rhoda Denison Bement was in.
That John Lewis was in.
You are a participant in that long struggle for democracy. The never-ending struggle.
Once you realize that, everything changes. And it’s time to adjust everything you do accordingly.
And as we enter 2024, it’s a critical moment for all who value democracy to understand this reality. To dedicate yourself to engaging in the long battle for democracy. And to take concrete action, wherever you are.
The stakes are as high as it gets.
Who’s in?
The Long Battle for Democracy