By Fiza Pirani, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

afc.org

1. Not all women could actually vote after the 19th amendment was ratified.
The struggle for women’s suffrage did not end with the 19th Amendment’s ratification, especially for black women, who still faced barriers in some Southern states.

2. The 19th Amendment was drafted in 1878 by suffrage leaders Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
It was introduced to Congress that same year by California Sen. Aaron A. Sargent.

3. The proposal sat in committee for nearly a decade only to be rejected in 1887 with a 16-to-34 vote.
After three more decades of no progress, another proposal was brought to the House in 1918. It finally passed the House on May 21, 1919 and the Senate on June 4, 1919.

4. The vote came down to a tiebreaker.
Two-thirds of House and Senate members were required to vote “yes” for its ratification. On Aug. 18, 1920, Tennessee became the tie-breaker state in a 48-48 tie.

According to History.com, the decision fell to 23-year-old Republican Rep. Harry T. Burn, who opposed the amendment himself, but was convinced by his mother to approve it.

His mother reportedly wrote to her son: “Don’t forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the ‘rat’ in ratification.”
5. More than 8 million American women voted for the first time in the November 1920 elections.

6. In July 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York, and the movement gained national spotlight.

The convention is widely regarded as the start of the women’s rights movement in America.

7. Stanton and Mott, along with a group of delegates, produced a “Declaration of Sentiments” document at the convention, modeled after the Declaration of Independence.
From the “Declaration of Sentiments:”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
8. Stanton and Anthony led several unsuccessful court challenges in the mid-1870s.

The women argued that the 14th Amendment, which granted universal citizenship, and the 15th Amendment together, which granted voting rights irrespective of race, guaranteed women’s voting rights.

But because Supreme Court decisions rejected their argument, suffrage leaders combined efforts to advocate for a new consititutional amendment.

9. It wasn’t until 1869, when the Wyoming Territory gave women ages 21 and up the same voting rights as men, including state voting rights, that there was a major victory for women’s voting rights.

10. Wyoming was also the first state to elect a female governor and its state nickname is “the Equality State.”
According to History.com, Nellie Tayloe Ross was elected governor in 1924.

11. A woman named Carrie Chapman Catt was instrumental in the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
Catt, who in 1900 succeeded Anthony as the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), made the controversial decision to support the war effort in World War I, something her colleagues and supporters weren’t thrilled about.

Eventually, women’s help during the war gave them a more nationalistic reputation and in his 1918 State of the Union address, President Woodrow Wilson spoke in favor of women’s right to vote.
12. Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi all rejected the amendment before finally ratifying it after Aug. 18, 1920.

13. It took more than 60 years for the other 12 states to ratify the 19th Amendment.

14. Georgia ratified the amendment on Feb. 20, 1970, after rejecting it on July 24, 1919.

15. The last state to ratify the 19th amendment was Mississippi, which did so on March 22, 1984.

16. The amendment overruled the 1875 Minor vs. Happersett case, granting women the right to vote.
In the case, a Missouri state court refused to register a woman as a lawful voter because state laws said only men were allowed to vote.

17. Residents of U.S. colonies (such as Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands) still cannot vote in presidential elections and don’t have Congressional representatives.

18. The 19th Amendment was formally adopted on Aug. 26, 1920.

This day is now nationally recognized as Women’s Equality Day.
19. According to the Center for American Women and Politics, in every presidential election since 1980, the proportion of eligible women voters has exceeded the proportion of eligible males who voted.

Read the full text of the 19th Amendment.

• August 1 – Clergy Sexual Abuse US and International
• August 6 – National Fresh Breath Day
• August 6 – National Wiggle Your Toes Day
• August 7 – Purple Heart Day
• August 8 – Happiness Happens Day
• August 8 – Severe ME Awareness Day (Severe & Very Severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis).
• August 9 – International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples
• August 12 – International Youth Day
• August 13 – International Left-handers Day
• August 19 – World Humanitarian Day
• August 20 – National Honey Bee Day
• August 21 – National Senior Citizens Day
• August 30 – International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances
• August 31 – International Overdose

1485 – The War of the Roses ended with the death of England’s King Richard III. He was killed in the Battle of Bosworth Field. His successor was Henry V II.

1567 – The “Council of Blood” was established by the Duke of Alba. This was the beginning of his reign of terror in the Netherlands.

1642 – The English Civil War began when Charles I called Parliament and its soldiers traitors.

1762 – Ann Franklin became the editor of the Mercury of Newport in Rhode Island. She was the first female editor of an American newspaper.

1770 – Australia was claimed under the British crown when Captain James Cook landed there.

1775 – The American colonies were proclaimed to be in a state of open rebellion by England’s King George III.

1846 – The U.S. annexed New Mexico.

1851 – The schooner America outraced the Aurora off the English coast to win a trophy that became known as the America’s Cup.

1865 – A patent for liquid soap was issued to William Sheppard.

1902 – In Hartford, CT, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt became the first president of the United States to ride in an automobile.

1906 – The Victor Talking Machine Company of Camden, NJ began to manufacture the Victrola. The hand-cranked unit, with horn cabinet, sold for $200.

1910 – Japan formally annexed Korea.

1911 – It was announced that Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” had been stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. The painting reappeared two years later in Italy.

1932 – The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) began its first TV broadcast in England.

1941 – Nazi troops reached the outskirts of Leningrad during World War II.

1950 – Althea Gibson became the first black tennis player to be accepted into a national competition.

1951 – 75,052 people watched the Harlem Globetrotters perform. It was the largest crowd to see a basketball game. 

1959 – Stephen Rockefeller married Anne Marie Rasmussen. Anne had once been a maid for the powerful and wealthy Rockefeller family.

1968 – Pope Paul VI arrived in Bogota, Colombia, for the start of the first papal visit to Latin America.

1972 – Due to its racial policies, Rhodesia was asked to withdraw from the 20th Olympic Summer Games. 

1973 – Henry Kissinger was named Secretary of State by U.S. President Nixon. Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize in the same year.

1984 – The last Volkswagen Rabbit rolled off the assembly line in New Stanton, PA.

1986 – Kerr-McGee Corp. agreed to pay the estate of the late Karen Silkwood $1.38 million to settle a 10-year-old nuclear contamination lawsuit.

1989 – Nolan Ryan became the first major league pitcher to strike out 5000 batters. (MLB)

1990 – U.S. President George H.W. Bush signed an order for calling reservists to aid in the build up of troops in the Persian Gulf.

1990 – The U.S. State Department announced that the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait would not be closed under President Saddam Hussein’s demand.

1990 – Angry smokers blocked a street in Moscow to protest the summer-long cigarette shortage.

1991 – It was announced by Yugoslavia that a truce ordered on August 7th with Croatia had collapsed.

1991 – Mikhail S. Gorbachev returned to Moscow after the collapse of the hard-liners’ coup. On the same day he purged the men that had tried to oust him.

1992 – In Rostock, Germany, neo-Nazi violence broke out against foreigners.

1996 – U.S. President Clinton signed legislation that ended guaranteed cash payments to the poor and demanded work from recipients.

2004 – In Oslo, Norway, a version of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” and his work “Madonna” were stolen from the Munch Museum. This version of “The Scream,” one of four different versions, was a tempera painting on board.

On August 21, 1863, a Confederate guerilla group led by William Quantrill attacked citizens in the town of Lawrence, Kansas, during the American Civil War. Guerillas killed more than 150 boys and men and burned much of the town. The Lawrence Massacre, also known as Quantrill’s raid, was a culmination of tension between local abolitionists and pro-slavery partisans along the Missouri-Kansas border. These border tensions had been brewing for some time. Beginning in 1855, pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers engaged in a series of violent confrontations and political killings over whether Kansas would be a free state or a slave state, leading to a border war known as “Bleeding Kansas.” Lawrence was founded along the Oregon Trail on the homelands of the Kaw, Lakota, Osage, and Kikapoo by New Englanders. Considered the anti-slavery capital, Lawrence was well-known as a stronghold for abolitionists and the Free-State movement. Continue reading…

Source: Fold3.com