Hands Upon the Plow

SSA choir, piano, opt. alto sax solo

Program Note from the poet:

Although I have tremendous respect for all three of our Trailblazers women honorees, I feel the greatest gratitude and personal empathy toward suffragist and women’s rights champion Al-ice Paul. I have voted in every election since 1968, and doing so is a right I’ve taken for grant-ed. Of course, I was aware of “the Movement,” but until I researched the life and work of Alice Paul and other women’s rights pioneers, I didn’t realize how long they had labored nor how deeply they suffered to obtain this gift of rightful participation in the democratic process for American women! Alice never married or had children. She organized, marched, confronted for decades—she was even painfully force-fed through a nose tube while on a hunger strike. She knew exactly how difficult it was to wield that heavy plow through the muddy fields of preju-dice, distrust and ignorance women faced as they tried to obtain even the most basic rights in a democracy. And that is why she entreated women to never stop pushing for equal rights until we reached the end of each row, or obstacle. We’ve come a long way, but we’re not there yet…

Some of the lines of my poem are quotes from Alice herself—e.g., “the movement as mosaic” and “no new worlds without female power.” Other original lines were inspired by her incredible bravery and persistence, ending (as any poem or song about Alice and her fellow suffragists must) with an exhortation to lift our voices and VOTE!

—Barbara Saxton