Legal Momentum Celebrates Women's Equality Day

August 26, 2011 -

Ninety-one years ago on August 26, 1920, the United States ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the right to vote. Forty years ago, thanks to a tireless campaign by Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY), Congress passed a Joint Resolution to officially declare August 26th as Women's Equality Day.

The road to women's suffrage was a decades-long struggle. Carrie Chapman Catt, pictured above, was the President of the Women's Suffrage Association and founded the International Women's Suffrage Alliance.

She summarized the hard-fought battle:

"To get the word 'male' in effect out of the Constitution cost the women of the country fifty-two years of pauseless campaign...During that time they were forced to conduct fifty-six campaigns of referenda to male voters; 480 campaigns to get Legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters; 47 campaigns to get State Constitutional conventions to write women suffrage into State Constitutions; 277 campaigns to get State party conventions to include women suffrage planks; 30 campaigns to get Presidential party conventions to adopt women suffrage planks in party platforms, and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses."

Carrie Chapman Catt's full statement on the long campaign for women's suffrage is available here.

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Photo from Flickr user Cliff1066 under Creative Commons 2.0.