The annual CSRA League of Women Voters’ EqualiTea event on March 21 at Advent Lutheran Church highlighted the history of women’s fight to achieve the right to vote.
Melissa DeVelvis, an Augusta University history professor, emceed the event and focused on individuals and organizations in the suffrage movement.
The high tea event is steeped in tradition. During the Revolutionary War era, women participated in the boycotts of English tea and tea would’ve been a place where women of status discussed the issues of the day.
Dressed as Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams, who would become the second president of the United States, Kay Gross read a letter she wrote to her husband in March 1776 imploring him to remember the women and give them rights too when framing a new nation.
John Adams dismissed her pleas and called her a “saucy” woman.
Sa Jules read from Sojourner Truth, a Black abolitionist and proponent of women’s rights in the 19th century.
Alice Simpkins and Jane DeLisser were honored with Making Democracy Work Award.
Charmain Z. Brackett, the publisher of Augusta Good News and Inspiring: Women of Augusta, has covered Augusta’s news for more than 35 years. She’s won multiple Georgia Press Association awards, is the recipient of the 2018 Greater Augusta Arts Council’s media award and was named Augusta Magazine’s best local writer in 2024 and 2025. Reach her at charmain@augustagoodnews.com. Sign up for the newsletter here.
