Created for the 2006 Women's Equality Day celebration at NYU Law School
Quoted verbatim in The New Yorker – 11/13/06, “Rise Up Ye Women” was created for a 2006 Women’s Equality Day event at NYC Law School and updated in 2012 for a NYC Veteran Feminists’ salute to Kate Millett. www. SandyRapp.com.
Rise Up Ye Women © Sandy Rapp 2006 & 2012
It was a time of dark and sad song,
Seven years with Bella been and gone.
Among the leaders from the days of long ago,
A troubled time had taken out its toll.
And there was one, from Illinois. It’s told how
Betty broke a new and grueling ground.
She went marchin' in Manhattan up Fifth Avenue ya know;
And she wrote a book that turned the world around.
Chorus:
Rise up ye women or the vintage it will fail,
Cried old prophet Isaiah, so they say.
And they rose up, the mighty women of a new and movin’ age;
And they grew to be the prophets of their day.
And there was one, from old Montgomery,
She rode a bus to freedom it is told.
She went marchin' by with Martin out of Selma long ago;
And into history our Rosa rode.
And there were two from Pennsylvania,
Where liberty is rung from every bell.
Molly Yard went marchin' to the rally in the sky;
And C. Delores Tucker left as well,
Repeat Chorus
And let us sing, Coretta Scott King,
For out from Alabama did she go.
There was Bella’s scribe Mim Kelber;
There was Wendy Wasserstein;
We lost ‘em all within a year ya know.
But we saluted those among us;
Kate Millett took the world on with a pen.
Sidney Abbot, Barbara Love, Chesler, Morgan, Gloria,
They made the Second Wave for NOW and then.
Repeat Chorus