Dear Editor,
It is sometimes said that history is an assemblage of past events that should not distract us in the present. Perhaps so, but only if history is seen as remote and abstract. A living history that directly informs the present is anything but a distraction.
I recently came across two such pieces of living history, from 1932 and 1958 respectively, in the pages of a couple of old newspapers. They bear an eerie resemblance to debates going on today, debates on the role of women in Guyanese society.
In June 1958, Rose Sobers, the Social Editor of the Sunday Chronicle, made a stirring call for a League of Women Voters for British Guiana. Lamenting the terrible social conditions of women and children, Sobers called for a body that would enable women “to get together and make our voices heard.” “Such a League,” she went on, “should be non-party,” with its membership “drawn
