Norma Rae - (Based on Crystal Lee Sutton ) Showing Today on TCM

Yep, this could have gone into the DU lounge or Labor - but in my mind? I saw this movie for the first time when I was contemplating a whistle blowing opportunity in a corporate environment. It caused me to seek out the book via the library system that chronicled her struggle and was the basis for the movie - Crystal Lee: A Woman of Inheritance.

More than a lesson on labor and certainly a stellar movie, is the lesson that sometimes it takes just ONE woman standing up. ONE woman putting HER neck on the line for everyone to have life just a bit better. She was my mother's contemporary. She didn't have my mom's education or advantages - but she cracked the ceiling one way and my mom cracked the ceiling another. And she's someone my mom admired the heck out of.

For our younger DU Feminists - if you aren't familiar with the movie or Ms. Sutton's story - it's well worth turning on the DVR if you don't have time today. Ms. Sutton lived and drudged in North Carolina - though the movie was filmed in Alabama.

It's such a great example of what ONE woman can do - when she gets loud, pugnacious and uses her rabble rousing abilities. To me? She's as significant as Ms. Ledbetter.

Would love to read other's impressions of this movie and if it ever inspired you to speak up - even when the odds are against you.