Today I woke up with a purpose. A purpose in life. I got ready for school with unusual speed and determination. I threw on my clothes, grabbed whatever exercise clothes in reach and ate my breakfast with confidence. All the way to school I reviewed what I had planned to say in my presentation in History class, first period. I was presenting Lucy Stone Blackwell for the Wall of Fame, a place where we (the students) can nominate people in history who've somehow affected America, present them to the class against two other students, and the class then votes for the best person.
Lucy Stone Blackwell one of the first women's rights activist, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton fallowed her. She was the first women in Massachusetts to graduate from college, Oberlin College. She wore pants in public, wrote the pamphlet "No taxation without Representation" and was a famous public speaker about anti-slavery with William Lloyd Garrison at a time when women were discouraged from public speaking. She was more than 100 years ahead of her time in every way.
Anyway, I was going against two other girls in my class. They shall remain unnamed. Only one of these girls is actually a friend of mine and she was doing MLK. I have rather conflicted feelings about the other girl. In fact I don't like her much at all and wish we didn't have to come into contact as much as we do. We have two classes together, and sadly in history class she sits diagonal from me. She is also happens to be what most people would describe as overly competitive and ambitious to the point of cutthroat. Oh, she covers it up well enough to fool most people quite frequently she lips up here and there. All last week she was asking me questions like "Have yo decided who you're doing yet? Have you made a list of possible candidates? If so, how many? I've narrowed it down to eight. Do yo know anything about The Other Girl's choice?" This made me rather uncomfortable so I didn't really give her anything but she was practically interrogating me almost every day.
My presentation was one of the best oral presentations on Lucy Stone Blackwell in the entire history of oral presentations on women's rights advocates ever given to a Watertown High School AP U.S. history class. However the other two girls had a martyr thing going that eclipsed poor Lucy Stone Blackwell, who had died of natural causes at a ripe age. The Girl-Who-Shall-Remain-Nameless did JFK. The Other Girl did Martin Luther King Jr. JFK won the sympathy vote, even though neither of those two, no doubt, heroic men did more for those two girls than Lucy Stone Blackwell did for them and women of the United States of America. JFK and MLK died for the betterment of our country but Lucy dedicated her life to ameliorate the treatment of womankind, to give us equal rights and equal citizenship in the country we live in, and if it weren't for her we wouldn't be where we are today. We have the right to vote, we have the right to get a free high school education, and we can where pants, and this is all because of her, it all started with her.