Pictured are Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Barack Obama
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and the Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog. Tel: 216-659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Coleman is a 22-year political, legal and investigative journalist who trained for 17 years, and under six different editors, at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com).
CLEVELAND, Ohio- Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton will speak in Cleveland, Ohio at 10 am on Thursday, August 27 at the Tinkham Veale University Center on the campus of Case Western Reserve University, an event that comes a day after the celebration of Women's Equality Day, which this year marks the 95th Anniversary of the day in 1920 that women across America won the right to vote. (Editor's note: People interested in attending the open-to-the-public voter registration rally should RSVP here. Doors open 9 a.m ).
The visit marks Clinton's first to Ohio since she announced her candidacy for president in April.
The former first lady and prior secretary of state under the Obama administration will also attend a private, $2,700-a-person fundraiser Thursday afternoon at the Cleveland home of Judy Embrescia.
The 19th amendment granted women the right to vote, a right known as women suffrage, and was passed by a divided Congress in 1919. It was ratified by the states on Aug. 26, 1920.
The ratification of the constitutional right of women to vote came 45 years before the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented Blacks from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment.
A major American city, Cleveland is 60 percent Black, has a population of some 375,000 people, and is a Democratic stronghold.
Three-term Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, who is Black, and all but one member of the 17-member Cleveland City Council are Democrats.
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama celebrated the 95th anniversary of the right to vote of women amid much ado today at the White House.
"On August 26, 1920, after years of agitating to break down the barriers that stood between them and the ballot box, American women won the right to vote," said Obama in an official proclamation that he read at today's press conference. "On the front lines of pickets and protests, champions from every corner of our country banded together to expand this fundamental freedom to women and forge a path toward fairer representation and greater opportunity. "
The president said that as "we celebrate 95 years since the certification of the 19th Amendment, let us demonstrate our commitment to the belief that we are all entitled to equal treatment by supporting policies that help women succeed and thrive."
And while the women's rights movement has proved to be effective by many accounts, more needs to be done to get women on par with men nationwide, data show, Black women included.
Only 104 out of 35 people in Congress are women.
Eighty-four of 435 representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives (or 18 percent) are women, and 20 out of 100 (or 20 percent) currently serve in the U.S. Senate.
Some 12 percent of governors, 18 percent of mayors, and 24 percent of state legislators throughout the country are women.
Women, still today, traditionally make 78 cents on the dollar in comparison to their male counterparts.
Black women as a whole, however, lag behind White women in practically every arena, research shows, with the exception of voting trends, and a few other initiatives.
Black women remain woefully underrepresented in elected office and hold only three percent of state legislative seats, and less than one percent of seats in Congress, according to a 2014 report by the Black Women’s Roundtable Public Policy Network (BWR). And 2015 makes the 16th consecutive year that no Black woman has held a seat in the United States Senate, Carol Mosley Braun being the first and only Black women elected to the U.S. Senate, who served from 1999 to 2001.
Also, the BWR report says that the maternal mortality rate for Black women is fully three times that of White women.
Black girls experience an out-of school suspension rate six times that of white girls, and Black women over 65 have the lowest household income of any demographic group in America, the report says.
Black women are also more likely to be violently murdered than any other ethic group, and at a rate that is nearly three times the murder rate of White women killed by men, according to a recent report by the Violence Policy Center.
Moreover, they only make up roughly two percent of practicing scientists and engineers in the workforce.
Despite their relatively strong work ethic, says the report, Black women remain behind economically.
While they are few and far between as CEO's in corporate board rooms, at fortune 500 companies and on Wall street, Black women are over-represented in low-wage fields. This, data show, is though they are often better educated and more skilled than a large percentage of the White men and women that subordinate them in various capacities, including in corporate America, politics, corrections and law enforcement, and administrative employment in secondary and higher education.
But the data also show that Black women are the fastest growing voting force of the American electorate, something both Democrats and Republicans are coming more and more to realize as the 2016 presidential election nears with a crowded field of GOP presidential candidates, and Clinton the front-runner for the Democratic nomination.
Women of color turned out in historically high numbers and overwhelmingly voted Democratic in 2008, the year the Democrats won both the White House and Congress, and also played a key role in the re-election in 2012 of Obama, America's first Black president. (www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com).
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