On this day in 1920, the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution was certified. The amendment prohibits the United States and its states from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex, in effect recognizing the right of women to vote. The amendment was the culmination of a decades-long movement for women’s suffrage in the United States.
The United States Constitution, adopted in 1789, left the boundaries of suffrage undefined. The only directly elected body created under the original Constitution was the U.S. House of Representatives, for which voter qualifications were explicitly delegated to the individual states. While women had the right to vote in several of the pre-revolutionary colonies in what would become the United States, after 1776, with the exception of New Jersey, all states adopted constitutions that denied voting rights to women. New Jersey’s constitution initially granted suffrage to property-holding residents, including single and married women, but the state rescinded women’s voting rights in 1807 and did not restore them until New Jersey ratified the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.
In 1918, President Wilson faced a difficult midterm election and would have to confront the issue of women’s suffrage directly. Fifteen states had extended equal voting rights to women and, by this time, the President fully supported the federal amendment. Between January 1918 and June 1919, the House and Senate voted on the federal amendment five times. Each vote was extremely close and Southern Democrats continued to oppose giving women the vote. Suffragists pressured President Wilson to call a special session of Congress and he agreed to schedule one for May 19, 1919. On May 21, 1919, the amendment passed the House 304 to 89, with 42 votes more than was necessary. On June 4, 1919, it was brought before the Senate and, after Southern Democrats abandoned a filibuster, 36 Republican senators were joined by 20 Democrats to pass the amendment.
By June 1920, after intense lobbying suffrage organizations, the amendment was ratified by 35 of the necessary 36 state legislatures. Ratification would be determined by Tennessee. In the middle of July 1920, both opponents and supporters of the Anthony Amendment arrived in Nashville to lobby the General Assembly. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee narrowly approved the Nineteenth Amendment, with 50 of 99 members of the Tennessee House of Representatives voting yes. Upon signing the ratification certificate, the Governor of Tennessee sent it by registered mail to the U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, whose office received it at 4:00 a.m. on August 26, 1920. Once certified as correct, Colby signed the Proclamation of the Women’s Suffrage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Nina Allender political cartoon aimed at President Wilson published in The Suffragist on October 3, 1917
ballerina Olga Lepeshinskaya and her marksmanship circa 1940, in preparation for town defense during the war…
Birthday Signs…
It’s Brazil…
MAGA?
(Thanks, Debra)
BADA BING BING BING…
Growing up teachers always told me there was no such thing as a stupid question. 6 years in retail has determined that was a lie.
Sarah Palin, No Longer Dumbest Person to Set Foot in Alaska.
Nice try, Alaska Boy, but still not distracted. Release the files.
The fact that my entire body cracks like a glowstick whenever I move, yet refuses to actually glow, is very disappointing.
Uganda has discovered 31M tons of gold ore containing 320,000 tons of refined gold, valued at $12T. The United States has decided Uganda needs more democracy and freedom.
Alaska hotel guests found papers with sensitive details about the Putin/Trump meeting in the hotel’s public printer.
I’ve reached the age where I’ve come to accept that I will never be old enough to know better.
Every morning for years, at about 11:30, the telephone operator in a small Sierra-Nevada town received a call from a man asking the exact time. One day the operator summed up nerve enough to ask him why the regularity. “I’m foreman of the local sawmill,” he explained. “Every day, I have to blow the whistle at noon, so I call you to get the exact time.” The operator giggled, “That’s odd,” she said. “All this time, we’ve been setting our clock by your whistle.”
Elephants are born weighing 250 pounds. They are the biggest babies on earth except for the people mad about male cheerleaders in the NFL.
If my memory were any worse, I could plan my own surprise party.
These days most things in my body hurt and what doesn’t hurt doesn’t work.
This is your daily reminder that people suck and you’re going to get pissed off today. Do what you gotta do. Just stay out of jail.
I’m not afraid of aging… I’m afraid of stairs, tiny print, and chairs that sit too low!
I want to grow my own food but I can’t find bacon seeds.
A flat tire can really leave you feeling deflated.
MAGA is against abortion because it cuts into their dating pool.
Most days I’m happy with my life choices. But someone on Gavin Newsom’s social team is getting paid to bully tRUMP and I didn’t know that was a career option.
It’s hilarious how they put jokes on the back of Oreo packages. Listen to this one… Serving Size: 2 cookies.
On this day in 1965, Sonny & Cher were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with ‘I Got You Babe’, the duo’s only UK No.1. Sonny Bono was inspired to write the song to capitalise on the popularity of the term “babe,” as heard in Bob Dylan’s ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’. Bono wrote the lyrics and composed the music of the song for himself and his then-wife, Cher, late at night in their basement. When Cher was woken up to sing the lyrics, she hated the song, not thinking it would be a hit, and immediately went back to bed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5fFlI7MFeM
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