Women's History Month Dinner 2024

Women’s Issues Network Celebrated Women’s History with quest speakers Ohio State Representative Latyna Humphrey, U.S. Congressional Candidates Zerqa Abid and Amy Cox.

We gathered for dinner at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio on April 9th, doors opened at 5:30 pm.

This year’s 60th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act makes it appropriate – and in the context of the upcoming 2024 Election, critically necessary– to examine where we are, as U.S. and Ohio citizens, and as women, in terms of civil rights now. 

We celebrate the passage of the 1964 bill–grateful for its prohibition of discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Yet even as we celebrate, we recognize it less as an accomplished fact than as the benchmark against which the real status of civil rights in our country can be assessed. We remember the protests, marches, and sacrifice that were needed before it could come about. We’ve seen the resistance, during the decades since, to the rights it was meant to protect. And we’re only too aware that in 2024, those rights are fiercely under attack! 

    We could not start with someone better than Helen Rankin. She made history as the first African American woman to serve in the Ohio legislature. Appointed in September 1978 to fill the seat of her late husband, James Rankin, two months later, she ran for the seat in her own right and won. She was reelected repeatedly – seven times– until her retirement in 1994.She deserves our absolute homage as a pioneer in fighting for women’s healthcare, pushing through legislation that – for the first time –required insurance companies to pay for mammograms and pap screenings! Persistent, she introduced it four times before it finally passed and was signed into law – in 1992! She was a champion of women, children, and the poor; worked for special services for the blind and communicatively impaired; and pushed for developmental services for children and youth. Always an advocate for the people, she showed her passion for her constituents by providing her direct phone number – so they could contact her at any time.