SC Women's Day Rally
All photos made at the statehouse in Columbia, SC on Saturday, March 8, 2025 / ©Sean Rayford
“My grandmother was a nurse in World War II. She married her patient, a young Olympia, South Carolina native who lost his eyesight in France. And she birthed three girls who gave my grandparents eight grandchildren,” said Mary Wood, from the steps of the South Carolina statehouse on Saturday afternoon, as about 200 demonstrators rallied for International Women’s Day in Columbia.
“I spent a lot of time with my grandmother when I was growing up. Perhaps it was the unconventionality of her marriage that first taught me there isn't an actual societal rule for relationships,” continued Wood, from Chapin, SC.
“Their’s was a more egalitarian relationship than most in the South Carolina of my youth, they relied upon one another for support and their respect was foundationally mutual. After all, she was the one who drove the car. Thank God.”
“At a time when most women saw something as small as that act as a man's job, from my grandmother, I learned that those assignments weren't real, and she taught me about resilience and unconditional love, and she and my mother, who is here today, helped me see my value still they were as I was, as I still am, constricted by the traditional expectation that women should present themselves a certain way, to be demure and pretty, to be seen and not heard, to have proper etiquette and to live in pursuit of being accepted by society, all under exhausting and diminishing constraints that societal standards are patriarchal constructs — y'all. And they absolutely do not serve us women.”
Dr. Robert Greene II, lead instructor at the Modjeska Simpkins School
Holding a bullhorn for Wood, Julie Zimmerman, network coordinator for the Midlands area 50501 organization, said the purpose of the rally was to highlight women’s issues.
“Things that our foremothers and ancestors fought so hard for, and that's one reason I'm really fired up to keep going, because I don't want what they did to be in vain,” said Wood, who acknowledged the rally was motivated by recent actions of the Trump administration.
