Il sito Witchwox riporta un'interessante analisi storica retrospettiva sul fenomeno della caccia alle streghe.

Troverete citato Cornelius Loos, un prete cattolico romano olandese che all'epocasi era opposto allacaccia alle streghe. Un bravo ragazzo della sua epoca.

One of the fiercest Witch-hunts was in western Germany, in the second half of the 16th century. Men, women and children were dragged from their homes to be tortured and condemned by a jury of village folk. They were usually killed first and then their bodies burnt to make sure that they would not return from the grave.

The Dutch scholar Looos Callidius tried to persuade people that these claims were false. He wrote: "magic (magia) ought not to he called witchcraft (maleficium) , nor magicians (magi) witches (malefici) , and that the passage of Holy Scripture, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Maleficos non patieris vivere) , is to be understood of those who by a natural use of natural poisons inflict death."

This might not seem like its related, but Feminism is an important part of Witchcraft. The Witch Craze of 16-18th centuries was a crime against women; it was an issue of women's rights. The old religions gave women rights where the Church took them away. The Bible declared that women were responsible for all the ills of the world, and that they should be punished, and live as slaves to men. Christians believed that women were inherently sinful and their lustful nature attracted them to Witchcraft - which they equated with Devil worship. Because of this belief, 75% of the thousands of people tortured and killed for Witchcraft were women.

http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=ukgb2&c=words&id=13174

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Prof. Shlomo Bunimovitz and Dr. Zvi Lederman of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations have uncovered an unusual ceramic plaque of a goddess in male dress, suggesting that a mighty female "king" may have ruled the city. If true, they say, the plaque would depict the only known female ruler of the region.

We may have found the 'Mistress of the Lionesses' who'd been sending letters from Canaan to Egypt.

Tel Aviv University archaeologists say that the new finds might turn the interpretation of pre-biblical history on its head. 

http://www.israel21c.org/bin/en.jsp?enDispWho=Articles^l2543&enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enVersion=0&enZone=Culture&

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A renderle omaggio c'erano MIchelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi e tante altre donne influenti a Washington.

Sojourner Truth, suffragista afro-americana, ha finalmente il posto che le spetta.

"I hope that Sojourner Truth would be proud to see me, a descendant of slaves, serving as first lady of the United States," Obama told the crowd of more than 1,000 in Emancipation Hall at the Capitol Visitor Center. She added that she was glad that African American children touring the Capitol -- "boys and girls like my own daughters" -- could now "come to Emancipation Hall and see the face of a woman who looks like them."

The predominantly female crowd roared its approval to both lines.

 The idea began with the late C. DeLores Tucker, former chair of the National Congress of Black Women, a nonprofit advocacy organization devoted to advancing the causes of African American women. Tucker originally wanted to add Truth's likeness to the eight-ton "Portrait Monument" statues of the heroines of the suffrage movement: Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/28/AR2009042803936.html

http://www.now.org/issues/legislat/052109truth.html

 

 

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Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964) is a noted educator and activist, the fourth African-American woman to get a Ph.D. Her most well known work is A Voice from the South: A Woman of the South and is considered one of the first expressions of Black Feminism. Cooper is the 32nd person depicted in the U.S. Postal Service's Black Heritage series.

http://stamps.about.com/od/buyingsellingstamps/ig/2009-USPS-Stamp-Releases/Anna-Julia-Cooper.htm

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Wall Street may seem like the ultimate boys’ club, but there are plenty of women who gained notoriety by participating in trading (including suffragist Victoria Woodhull, who opened the first female-owned brokerage). This exhibit examines their legacy, and looks to the future of women in the financial world.

http://newyork.timeout.com/events/museums/288142/women-of-wall-street

 http://www.moaf.org/exhibits/women_of_wall_street/index

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The woman whose life inspired the 1979 film Norma Rae has died of cancer after struggling with her health insurance company, which had delayed her treatment.

Crystal Lee Sutton was 68. She had struggled for several years with meningioma, a form of brain cancer.

She became a hero to the labor movement in the 1970s, when she took on her employer, a North Carolina textile plant, and unionized the factory floor. Her story became famous nationwide in 1975 after New York Times reporter Hank Leiferman wrote Crystal Lee: A Woman of Inheritance.

http://www.nyegateway.com/2009/09/real-norma-rae-dead-of-cancer-after-battle-with-health-insurer.html

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Wilma Mankiller, whose life encapsulated some of the traditions and the changes that are part of contemporary Native American culture, died on Tuesday. She was 64.

In 1985, Mankiller became the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation, a position she held for a decade. As chief, she headed the Tribal Council, the ruling body of the 72,000-member Cherokee Nation, and was principal guardian of Cherokee customs and traditions

"The only issue in the first election was my being female," she said. "That was a total — a total issue in the entire election. There was incredible opposition because of that. But the people who stayed with me in the '83 election and who stayed with me through today, 10 years later, have been the older people in the tribe and the more traditional elements of the tribe. I've always found that fascinating. My husband and I have talked about it and I think we've come to the conclusion that maybe older people have a greater sense of history and understand that there was a time when women played a more significant role in the tribe and there was more balance and harmony between men and women in the Cherokee Nation."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125668640

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From the late 1950s she led the National Council of Negro Women, founded in 1935 to encourage mainly middle-class black women to support humanitarian causes and programmes of interracial social action.

Originally considered a moderate voice in the black liberation movement, the NCNW was already becoming more militant when Dorothy Height took over as its fourth president in 1957. Although at first she repudiated the rallying cries of Black Power leaders, by the 1970s she was supporting calls for a more direct approach to tackling racial injustice.

In the 1960s she led an intensive integration programme, campaigning for racial desegregation in several areas of American local life such as clubs and swimming pools.

She received two of America's highest civilian honours, being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Height

 http://womenshistory.about.com/od/civilrights/p/dorothy_height.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/7615645/Dorothy-Height.html

Michelle and I were deeply saddened to hear about the passing of Dorothy Height - the godmother of the Civil Rights Movement and a hero to so many Americans.  Ever since she was denied entrance to college because the incoming class had already met its quota of two African American women, Dr. Height devoted her life to those struggling for equality. She led the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years, and served as the only woman at the highest level of the Civil Rights Movement - witnessing every march and milestone along the way.

 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-president-passing-dr-dorothy-height

 

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There are no ceremonies planned at the Tennessee State Capitol, but 90 years ago today, it was the site of a major event in both the nation's and Tennessee's history.

On Aug. 18, 1920, the Tennessee House of Representatives approved by a single vote the resolution ratifying the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, giving women the right to vote. It was 72 years after the U.S. women's suffrage movement was officially launched at a convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y.

Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the amendment, the number required for its addition to the Constitution.

Ratification did not come easily. After decades of work by supporters, Congress finally passed the proposed amendment and sent it to the states for ratification in 1919. In the summer of 1920, it had stalled at 35 states.

"Tennessee's Senate had already approved it, but after several votes in the House, the issue was deadlocked. As the debate continued, Burn (who had earlier spoken against the amendment) opened a letter from his mother urging him to vote for it. He did.

The National Archives continued: "The next day, Harry Burn explained his vote to angry opponents: 'I believe in full suffrage as a right. I believe we had a moral and legal right to ratify. I know that a mother's advice is always safest for her boy to follow, and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification'."

A bas relief in the Capitol and historical markers outside mark the occasion.

 http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2010/aug/18/mothers-letter-led-to-suffrage/

 

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After 11 years, Amelia Earhart is finally coming to the Capitol -- making her only the 10th woman to be featured in the historic Statuary Hall.

Last fall, Lynette Long was touring the Capitol with her son and his girlfriend and noticed just how few women were depicted. Long, a psychologist with a private practice in Chevy Chase, was already upset about how few women are on stamps, coins and currency -- and unhappy to see a mere nine women in Statuary Hall. "I said to the tour guide, 'We're going to change this,'." Long told us.

That fateful tour led to the formation of Equal Visibility Everywhere (EVE), a nonpartisan organization dedicated to featuring more women on our nation's symbols and icons. "We send subliminal messages to young girls that say, you don't matter," she said. "Everybody cries about sexism that is blatant, but the sins of omission no one notices."

Long contacted the Atchison Chamber of Commerce and discovered that the proper documents for Earhart's statue had never been submitted to the Architect of the Capitol. After some lobbying, Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson signed papers this month authorizing EVE to commission the design for Earhart's statue and raise the $300,000 needed to complete the design.

The statue -- which must be made of bronze or marble -- will stand 16 feet high, including the pedestal, and replace John James Ingalls, a Kansas senator in the 1870s and '80s.

Long estimated it will take three to four years to select a design and complete the statue; in the meanwhile, she's also raising money for a 40-foot Earhart balloon for parades: "I think she'll be popular."

 http://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/2010/08/amelia_earhart.html

 

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