Long Journey to Equality
It was on this day in 1884 that Susan B. Anthony addressed the United States Congress, arguing for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote. She said, “We appear before you this morning … to ask that you will, at your earliest convenience, report to the House in favor of the submission of a Sixteenth Amendment to the Legislatures of the several states, that shall prohibit the disfranchisement of citizens of the United States on account of sex.”
…didn’t become law until almost fifteen years after her death…
She had been petitioning Congress in writing for sixteen years, but this was the first time that she managed to persuade Congress to vote on the amendment. It failed.
But even though the constitutional amendment failed that year, it was only six years later, in 1890, that Wyoming became the first state to give women the right to vote. Colorado adopted women’s suffrage in 1893. Fifteen states in all gave women the right to vote in the next thirty years.
Susan B. Anthony died in 1906. The amendment she asked for on this day in 1884 didn’t become law until almost fifteen years after her death, on August 26, 1920.
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