PINK THREADS by Elisabeth Griffith

The 1920s expanded the expectations and images of American women. They included flappers and feminists, aviators and “It Girls,” girl detectives like Nancy Drew, Betty Crocker and bathing beauties. Almost all of them were white women. Republican President Warren Harding won in a landslide because he promised a return to “normalcy” after America’s first engagement in a European war, a global pandemic, widespread labor unrest and raging racial violence. What Americans got was the Roaring Twenties.

Feminist icon Gloria Steinem died on Wednesday, at age ninety-two. She had been on the front lines of the fight for equal rights for six decades. The journalist and activist supported farm workers, civil rights, women’s rights and reproductive rights and opposed apartheid, genital mutilation, sexual harassment and sex trafficking. In 1972, she founded Ms. magazine. “I am an entrepreneur of social change,” she said. “I raise money. I talk. I write.

I’m drafting this summary in the Sierra Nevadas, where I’ve been hiking in Yosemite National Park. It is stunningly beautiful, dramatic, serene, vast and overwhelming. One runs out of adjectives to describe the granite cliffs, sequoia groves, vast meadows and water features, although, due to less snow last winter, the landmark waterfalls are dry.

This essay about Emmett Till’s murder describes racial violence and sharp divisions in our country’s past. That legacy lingers. Seventy years ago, an account of the murder was purposely distorted by a supposedly reputable journalist. Only recently have facts corrected his false narrative, which is one reason I’m reissuing this revised essay. I hope PINK readers find it worth revisiting.

Thursday, August 26, 1920, began early for President Wilson’s Secretary of State. Bainbridge Colby awoke at 3:42 a.m., when a telephone call from his Solicitor General announced that Tennessee’s formal notice of ratification of the woman suffrage amendment had arrived at Union Station. Because opponents intended to bring an injunction when the DC Court of Appeals opened at nine o’clock, the Secretary certified the Nineteenth Amendment earlier, at home, without ceremony. There were no photographers.

Like many retail outlets across the South in the 1950s, Katz Drug Stores, “The World’s Leading Cut Rate Drug Store,” served African Americans in its pharmacy and aisles, but not at its lunch counter. They could order bag lunches to take out but could not sit down. On August 19, 1958, a Tuesday afternoon, thirteen students and their history teacher, Mrs. Clara Luper, challenged that policy at the Katz branch in Oklahoma City. They sat at the counter and ordered Cokes.

Because we share an alma mater, I’ve known that Katharine Lee Bates wrote the poem which became the lyrics of a beloved American anthem, “America the Beautiful.” Congressional resolutions to substitute it for the “Stars Spangled Banner” have not gotten out of committee, but public petitions continue. The arguments for changing range from the bellicosity of the 1814 lyrics to objections to Francis Scott Key’s ties to slavery, to how hard it is to sing.

Please excuse a brief pause in posts.Your author has been distracted by caring for my adorable grand girl, who couldn’t go to daycare because she had a temperature, and by a still busted freezer compressor.I had planned to report on the infamous 1974 ordination of the Philadelphia Eleven, supposedly renegade female Episcopal priests.Ah well. Next year . . . Thank you for your patience. READER RESPONSES remain my reward for writing these snippets.

From Betsy: Voting rights for all Americans are being challenged. The president has claimed, without evidence, that there is widespread voter fraud. The Supreme Court has limited the protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The House has passed the SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) Act, which would make it much more difficult for every American, but especially married women, to vote.

Dear Readers: I may have made an etymological error, by calling these collections of your comments LOOSE ENDS.It did not occur to me until today to check the meaning of the phrase. Webster’s defines it as “unfinished business, something left hanging loose,” which does apply to these additional details, but the term originated on ships, not in sewing rooms.It referred to the unsecured ends of ropes, which could cause accidents.