Laura R. Woliver is the president of the League of Women Voters chapter based in Columbia, South Carolina. Woliver is the author of publications such as “Dissent is Patriotic: Disobedient Founders, Narratives, and Street Battles,” and “Push Back, Move Forward: The National Council of Women’s Organizations and Women’s Coalition Advocacy.” Woliver was reached out to by Winthrop after becoming familiar with her work. The 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment approaching Winthrop wanted a speaker to talk about gender and rights. She is also familiar with the Winthrop community from scholars that attend political science conventions Woliver frequents.
Woliver spoke about women’s rights, the rights of minorities and what life was like for women without the rights we have today. The 19th Amendment was the “biggest expansion of suffrage in this country’s history. Woliver said that women are the “majority of voters … and taxpayers” in the United States. The women that fought for the right to vote were not quiet in their doing so, Woliver said. “They were uppity. They were loud. They were un-ladylike for more than 70 years.”
Woliver said that women were not given the right to vote, but rather they won the right to vote. She went on to talk about Sen. Strom Thurmond and Gov. Ben Tillman (who also served as a senator), two late South Carolina politicians who are part of Winthrop’s history and campus. Wolliver said that Tillman’s son, Benjamin “B.R.” Tillman III married a wealthy, upper class woman from Charleston, South Carolina named Lucy Dugas. However, Dugas eventually filed for divorce due to her husband’s drinking habits. When they divorced, B.R. Tillman signed his children off to his father partly because he may have believed he could not take care of them. Dugas, being from a wealthy family, took the Tillmans to court. In the case of Tillman vs Tillman (Lucy Dugas Tillman v Tillman family), Dugas won her children back, which set a precedent for women around the country. It also showed how no one is immune to the oppression associated with being a woman.
Soli Byrd, a junior at Winthrop, was shocked to learn that former South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond had a secret biracial daughter. “On campus there are many buildings named after important figures, and it’s important to learn about their pasts, both pleasant and distasteful,” Byrd said.
Byrd said the most important takeaway from the event is that the “fight for equality” hasn’t happened overnight. “It is important to fight for what you believe in because the women before us faced incomprehensible struggles and still never gave up,” Byrd said.
Sophomore Ariah Massey attended the event. She said her worries for this country are that people “cannot put aside their differences and make a sane decision.”
“Try to make things better for everyone in a category, not just one person at a time,” Woliver said.
Photo: Ann Marie Juarez/ The Johnsonian
