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Tuesday, August 18, 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This amendment established women's suffrage for the first time, granting white women across the country the right to vote to the exclusion of non-white women. Yet the women's suffrage movement contained many more key players than this outcome suggests. Among them were African American luminaries like Mary Church Terrell and the scores of Black women who joined with her to demand equal rights.

“The movement to end war and mass atrocities spans centuries, peoples, and ideologies”

I became interested in international criminal law and genocide prevention through Facing History and Ourselves’ founder Margot Stern Strom, for whom I interned during my gap year between high school and college. Margot introduced me to the thoughts of Benjamin Ferencz, the only surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials. As I read through Ben’s articles and books, I internalized his call to action. Margot and Ben’s approach to the world resonated with my heart, my deepest sense of human dignity, and my own moral reasoning as to how we must learn to get along with each other as one human community.

Across the United States, people are gearing up for Election Day on November 3, 2020 in the midst of continuing cultural, social, and political upheavals.