Whatever you do, don’t take Women’s History Month for granted.

Yes, it’s one of those forced calendar holidays that people often forget about. But the fact that March is Women’s History Month is remarkable for many reasons. First, the women who lobbied for the federal designation in the 1980s were an interesting bunch. Molly Murphy MacGregor, a former high school social studies teacher, rallied a group of feminists and educators in Santa Rosa, California, to talk about why less than three percent of their history textbooks were devoted to content about women. They lobbied Congress in 1980 to make one week in March National Women’s History Week. By 1987, they had convinced Congress and the Reagan administration to make it a whole month. Now, their nonprofit National Women’s History Project aims to teach as many people as possible about women’s roles in history.

But it’s not just the designation that’s amazing. Consider this: Just 91 years ago, women didn’t have the right to vote in this country. It’s a fact that makes Lillian Exum Clement’s accomplishments all the more notable (see Katy Nelson’s roundup of the most fascinating women in WNC history, starting on page 48). Clement was born in Black Mountain in 1894 and worked in the Buncombe County Sheriff’s office before becoming Asheville’s first female attorney to practice without male partners. People addressed her as “Brother Exum.” In 1920, a few months before the 19th Amendment passed and gave women the right to vote, Clement beat two male opponents in a Democratic primary landslide and eventually won a seat in the North Carolina House of Representatives. She was the first woman in the South to be part of any state legislative body.

In the next few weeks, if you can’t make it out to any women’s history events (see our roundup, page 20), celebrate cool women in history in some other way. Read a book by one of Asheville’s most famous authors, Wilma Dykeman, or listen to an album by Tryon native Nina Simone. It must seem ludicrous to some modern women (me included) to think that, just a short time ago, American women couldn’t own property or vote. This is the month to celebrate the great ladies who helped make those rights—and so many others—a given.

Happy reading,

Jess McCuan

jess@vervemag.com