It took years of women staging hunger strikes, marching in the streets, and going to jail for them to win their fight for suffrage. They won that battle 90 years ago today when Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified that 2/3 of the states had ratified the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
The final vote to ratify the 19th Amendment came in Tennessee, and was cast by a young legislator who switched sides at the last minute because his mother told him to. No doubt she was threatening to withhold his favorite meal until he came to his senses.
Think about that. There are women alive today who lived in a time where women were denied the basic rights of citizenship. Their mothers and grandmothers lived their lives without full citizenship. Yet today people take that right for granted.
Elizabeth Caddy Stanton is credited with organizing the first conference about giving women the right to vote in 1848. It only took 72 years to get men to agree. One of the lasting organizations that came out of this movement was the League of Women Voters, which is still active in educating voters about candidates and ballot issues. No point in voting, unless you know what is at stake, is there?
Unfortunately, over the past 90 years we’ve gotten lazy. Instead of doing our homework and understanding the issues, we just vote for which ever candidate represents the party with which we have aligned ourselves—even if that party has descended into whack-a-doodle-landia, and even when the issue is not in our own best interest.
Homework:
A Forgotten Fight for Suffrage
Happy Birthday 19th Amendment
Ed Rendell calls GOP whacky
The final vote to ratify the 19th Amendment came in Tennessee, and was cast by a young legislator who switched sides at the last minute because his mother told him to. No doubt she was threatening to withhold his favorite meal until he came to his senses.
Think about that. There are women alive today who lived in a time where women were denied the basic rights of citizenship. Their mothers and grandmothers lived their lives without full citizenship. Yet today people take that right for granted.
Elizabeth Caddy Stanton is credited with organizing the first conference about giving women the right to vote in 1848. It only took 72 years to get men to agree. One of the lasting organizations that came out of this movement was the League of Women Voters, which is still active in educating voters about candidates and ballot issues. No point in voting, unless you know what is at stake, is there?
Unfortunately, over the past 90 years we’ve gotten lazy. Instead of doing our homework and understanding the issues, we just vote for which ever candidate represents the party with which we have aligned ourselves—even if that party has descended into whack-a-doodle-landia, and even when the issue is not in our own best interest.
Homework:
A Forgotten Fight for Suffrage
Happy Birthday 19th Amendment
Ed Rendell calls GOP whacky
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