On August 18, 2020, we will be celebrating the centennial of the 19th Amendment, giving all women the right to vote.
The battle for women suffrage was a long, hard fought struggle for 72 years, since the first national call for the right to vote for women occurred at the Seneca Falls, New York Equal Rights Convention in 1848.
It took fifty years after the 15th Amendment, giving African American men the right to vote in 1870, before the battle for women, white and nonwhite, to gain that similar right was accomplished, as it was thought to be too extreme and radical after the Civil War, crazy as that is, when one looks back!
It was the work of Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the convention, and over the next 72 years, Stanton continued her activism, and was joined in it by such figures as Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Alice Paul.
And the final push for the 19th Amendment came from the first woman to serve in Congress, in the House of Representatives, Republican Jeanette Rankin of Montana.
Now, we will have a woman Vice Presidential nominee, to be announced soon by Joe Biden, and a strong chance that whoever is selected will become the first woman Vice President, and possibly, a future President!