Share our celebration of the 29th year of “I Believe Anita Hill”!
The women who organize the Anita Hill Celebration have a mission: to encourage women and men to stand up and speak out for justice and equality. “I Believe Anita Hill!” is thought to be South Carolina’s largest continuous networking event for women.
In 2020, our celebration will be held virtually because of the coronavirus. Our theme this year is “Speaking Truth to Power.”
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In the first 10 years of “I Believe Anita Hill!”, we explored what happened to Hill in 1991 – alleged sexual harassment by a then-nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court and the hostile environment that Hill encountered while telling her story — and we tried to make sure people didn’t forget.
See the ANITA HILL history.
As the first decade of “I Believe Anita Hill!” ended, we realized that a younger generation with greater success in the workplace believed that their access and achievements had always been possible. We knew that wasn’t true.
Anita Hill and others were courageous enough to draw a line in the sand and stand up for their rights, despite heated public censure. So we adjusted our mission to do more than recognize Hill and support the fight against sexual harassment. We decided that we would continue to demonstrate our concerns about justice and equality. We also decided that we should push back — resisting the continuation of unequal pay as well as unequal access, for example, to health care, to mortgages, to top corporate jobs, and to board rooms.
Over the next 15 years, “I Believe Anita Hill!” moved into areas that were “sister concerns.” In that process, we reached out to the next generations, intending to, as we said, “Bring them along.” We made a stronger effort to invite young women, help them expand their networks, and help them achieve their goals. We celebrated that mission in our 25th anniversary in 2016, attended by Anita Hill herself and by 750 supporters.
But it’s not all better. We’ve made some progress but earning 82 cents to a man’s dollar, holding 23.7 percent of the seats in Congress, that’s not enough improvement. When we passed the marker of the 25th year, our silver anniversary, we realized we must once again expand our mission.
We decided we would connect people attending “I Believe Anita Hill!” to organizations doing good work in our mission areas of justice and equality. We knew that many people wanted to volunteer but might not know where to turn to make a difference. We called these 2017 and 2018 efforts “Connecting Community.”
In 2019, our theme became “Forward—Not Back.” With more women in leadership positions, our belief is that the state will move forward politically, socially, economically, educationally, and environmentally.
And now it is 2020, when we are “Speaking Truth to Power”. Please join us.
Barbara Rackes, Anita Hill Celebration Coordinator