Time out! Today we celebrate Women’s Equality Day. On August 26, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote was signed into law.

            If you think Title IX has been a battle, you need to read up on the suffrage fight!* Women fought for 72 years just to have the word “men” deleted from the Constitution’s wording on voting rights. It took more work — and more years — to ensure all women could vote regardless of color or heritage, but we were on our way. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally outlawed discrimination of any kind at the polls.

            Today I want to introduce you to just one of the millions of suffragists who devoted their lives to the suffrage cause.

Mother doesn’t vote

            Carrie Chapman Catt had a political awakening when she was just 11 years old. In 1872, as her father and brothers hitched up the family wagon to go into their Iowa town to vote in the presidential election (Greeley vs. Grant), she saw that her mother wasn’t getting ready to go.

             “Why, Mother, aren’t you going to vote for Greeley?” she asked. She was interested in national affairs, and had accompanied her father to political rallies, but she didn’t realize until that day that women couldn’t vote.**

            Carrie took the office of president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1900 and again in 1915. While a few states granted women the vote during her tenure — most notably New York State — she realized that a federal amendment was the real way ahead. In 1916, at an emergency meeting of NAWSA, she urged women to press on.

            “Nothing less than this nation-wide, vigilant, unceasing campaigning will win the ratification,” she told them. “The Woman’s Hour has struck! Women arise: Demand the vote!”***

Victory ahead

            The suffragists’ unceasing campaign finally paid off. The amendment passed Congress in June 1919 and went out to the states for ratification. One by one, states voted to ratify, until Carrie saw victory ahead.

            At a suffrage convention held on February 13, 1920, Carrie addressed the crowd of thousands of women. Although victory was still six months away, she was convinced the battle was won.

            Here, I’ve reprinted excerpts from her victory speech that day. It was a rousing message that drew thunderous applause. And it speaks to us today, as women continue to fight in many realms for true equality.  

Be Joyful Today

            There is no earthly power that can do more than delay by a trifle the final enfranchisement of women.

            The enemies of progress and liberty never surrender and never die. Ever since the days of cave men, they have stood ready with their sledge hammers to strike any liberal idea on the head whenever it appeared.

            Suffragists were never dismayed when they were a tiny group and all the world against them. What care they now when all the world is with them? March on, suffragists—the victory is yours!

            The trail has been long and winding; the struggle has been tedious and wearying. You made sacrifices and received many hard knocks. Be joyful today! Our final victory is due, is inevitable, is almost here.

            Some day the history of these past few months will be written and, if the writer catches the real spirit of it all, it will be a thrilling story. Ours has been a movement with a soul, a dauntless, unconquerable soul ever leading on.

            Women be glad today! Let your voices ring out the gladness in your hearts. There will never come another day like this. Let the joy be unconfined and let it speak so clearly that its echo will be heard around the world and find its way into the soul of every woman of any and every race and nationality who is yearning for opportunity and liberty still denied her sex.

                                                            ___________________

* You can start with my book! Women Win the Vote! 19 for the 19th Amendment (Norton Young Readers, 2020). I profile nineteen women whose work led to victory in the suffrage fight.

** Mary Gray Peck, Carrie Chapman Catt: A Biography (New York: H.W. Wilson, 1944), p. 28.

* Carrie Chapman Catt, “The Crisis,” Atlantic City, NJ (September 7, 1916). My excerpts come from the version printed in the Woman’s Journal and Suffrage News (September 16, 1916), p.1.

PHOTO: That’s Carrie holding the massive victory bouquet. When victory finally came, she was honored with a ticker tape parade and a banquet in New York City.