Women’s Equality Day 2017

In 1971, Congress designated August 26 as Women’s Equality Day to commemorate the anniversary of the signature of the 19^th amendment to the constitution in 1920. This is a photo of Pennsylvania Governor William Sproul ratifying the constitutional amendment to guarantee suffrage for all women who are citizens of the United States. The Women’s Suffrage Movement stretched from the first Women’s Convention that was held at Seneca Falls NY in 1848 to the final ratification of the amendment in 1920. This effort took a whole 72 years of protests and marches and letter writing and picketing and cajoling and rallies across the country in the brutal state-by-state ratification process to finally give women the right to vote. That is a kind of persistence that I think is crazy/amazing and for which I am so grateful!!