One hundred years ago today, Carrie Chapman Catt, one of the leading figures in the women's suffrage movement that had had its beginnings in the U.S. some sixty years before that, celebrated the certification of the Nineteenth Amendment with a speech including these words:
The vote is the emblem of your equality, women of America, the guarantee of your liberty. That vote of yours has cost millions of dollars and the lives of thousands of women. ... Women have suffered agony of soul which you can never comprehend, that you and your daughters might inherit political freedom. That vote has been costly. Prize it! The vote is a power, a weapon of offense and defense, a prayer. Understand what it means and what it can do for your country. Use it intelligently, conscientiously, prayerfully. ... The vote is won. ... but human affairs with their eternal change move on without pause. Progress is calling to you to make no pause. Act!
"Woman Suffrage" (1915) photo from the Library of Congress.
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