Rep. Elijah Cummings
During Women’s History Month this year, the leadership of the National Women’s History Project urges all Americans to learn from the women in public service and government who have dedicated their lives to “forming a more perfect union.”
Theirs is excellent advice.
During an often divisive presidential election year, the vision and strength that American women have contributed in our national journey toward universal equality and opportunity seem, all too often, to have been cast aside and forgotten.
In one party’s presidential race, especially, the candidates appear to be seeking victory by dividing one from another.
Rather than elevating our debates about public policy to a higher level of mutual respect and thoughtful consideration in which solutions could actually be achieved, we are witnessing the politics of prejudice, hostility and fear.
Yet, I remain hopeful. In the legislatures of our nation, and in our community gatherings, the women of our nation are calling upon us — as President Lincoln called upon us in 1861 — to follow “the better Angels of our nature.”
Today, as in our past, America’s Eagle needs to soar to new heights of creativity, humanity and mutual respect if we are to overcome the challenges that we now face as a nation. We must reject those who would have us scapegoat and feast like Vultures on the helpless and disparaged.
As President Obama urged us in this year’s Women’s History Month Proclamation, public policies that advance opportunity in which all can gain are the key to achieving the more perfect union that we all should be seeking.
“Let us uphold the responsibility that falls on all of us — regardless of gender,” our President declared, “and fight for equal opportunity for our daughters as well as our sons.”
In this vein, we should commend the 16 women leaders honored by the Women’s History Project this year. To that illustrious list, I would add three remarkable women — two from my childhood and one from my adult life — who have done so much for our community here in Baltimore.
I do so because of the important lessons they offer to all of us during this turbulent election year.
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Juanita Jackson Mitchell, Esq.
In my own life, I will forever be grateful to the NAAP’s Juanita Jackson Mitchell, the first African-American woman to practice law in Maryland, who stood up for us children when we marched to integrate Riverside Swimming Pool.
By her courage and encouragement, Ms. Mitchell taught Black children that — if we remained steadfast in the face of adversity — we could win rights that others would have to respect.
There, on the streets of South Baltimore in the early 1960s, Juanita Jackson Mitchell instilled in me the confidence, determination and faith that I, too, could become an advocate for the disparaged and forgotten people of my community.
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Del. Lena K. Lee
Nor will I ever forget Maryland Delegate Lena K. Lee, who believed in me, expanded my vision of the civil rights struggle to include economic empowerment, and helped me to undertake those critical first steps that led me to the Maryland Legislature.
Master teacher, union leader, lawyer and legislator – Delegate Lee was prominent in every civil rights struggle of her time. I will never forget her words to me back in 1982, words that would change the course of my life.
“I am going to retire from the House of Delegates,” she informed me, “and I am looking for a competent and caring lawyer to take my place. I was hoping to find a woman, but I think that you will do.”
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Sen. Barbara Ann Mikulski
Trained as a Master Social Worker and Community Organizer, our Senior Senator from Maryland, Barbara Ann Mikulski, has become so beloved by the citizens of our State that she is now the longest serving woman in the history of the United States Congress — and the recipient, last year, of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
No leader in our history has done more to advance the cause of economic empowerment and quality health care for all of our people, whatever their gender, racial background or economic station in life may be.
Like every great national leader, “Senator Barb,” as we fondly call her here in Baltimore, has fused our vision of a more perfect union with the political and social acumen to advance that vision toward reality.
“What is needed,” she observed more than 45 years ago, “is an alliance of White and Black, white collar, blue collar and no collar based on mutual need, interdependence and respect, an alliance to develop the strategy for new kinds of community organization and political participation.”
This is the same vision that President Obama and we who have supported him advanced so successfully in 2008 and 2012.
We disregard the wisdom of these great Americans at our peril. However, if we follow the lead of these wise and dedicated women, we can move forward toward our more perfect union in 2016.
Congressman Elijah Cummings represents Maryland’s 7th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives.