104 years ago today—August 26, 1920— at 8 a.m. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, alone in his house, drank a cup and a half of coffee, and then, using a regular pen, he signed the Proclamation of the Nineteenth Amendment enfranchising 26, 000 women in America with these simple words:
“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 the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
Newspapers across America and abroad announced the epochal news. EQUAL SUFFRAGE IS LAW OF LAND proclaimed the front page headline in a Pensacola, Florida, newspaper. A photograph of Alice Paul unfurling the ratification flag from the balcony of the National Woman's Party headquarters to the delight of suffragists standing on the sidewalk below appeared in newspapers across the country.
In a general store in Arkoe, Missouri, Maye Shipps Corrough, a trombone player who marched in the Missouri Ladies Military Marching Band in the 1913 iconic suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. "got up on the table and danced!".
In 1971 and 1973, Congresswoman Bella Abzug, nicknamed “Battling Bella,” introduced a resolution to establish a national day—Women's Equality Day—to mark, remember, and celebrate this monumental achievement by generations of dauntless and indefatigable women and stalwart male allies.
In 1972, President Richard Nixon issued the first official recognition of Women's Equality Day. Congress approved the resolution in 1973.
Efforts are underway to make Women's Equality Day a federal holiday, as well it should be!!!
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