Learn about the heroes of Women's Equality Day
Rep. Bella Abzug Establishes Women's Equality Day in 1973
Abzug was a leader of the Second Wave Feminist movement that started in the 1960s. Women's Equality Day commemorates the passage of the 19th Amendment -- the Women Suffrage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- on August 26, 1920, which gave U.S. women full voting rights.
Suffrage is the right to vote in a political election. Prior to the 19th Amendment in 1920, women in the United States did not have the right to vote. Hence, someone who peacefully campaigned for equal rights for women was known as a suffragist.
Lucy Stone was a pioneer for women's rights and was the first woman to graduate from Oberlin College.
"Eight years later in Seneca Falls, New York, Mott and Stanton, along with Mott's younger sister, Martha Coffin Wright, fulfilled the pledge they had made to each other in London and held the first woman's rights convention in America.”
Jeanette Rankin, the first Congresswoman, fought for suffrage, equal pay, child welfare, laws to protect working women, and birth control and introduced the first debate on unrestricted voting rights to women.
Alice Paul was a suffragist and leader for the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, which granted women the right to vote. She picketted the White House and organized boycotts.
Photo
Dressed like Joan of Arc on a white horse, Inez Milholland Boissevain, a New York attorney, led a group of women all dressed in white. Here she is on horseback at the Women's Equality March in Washington D.C., 1913
Portrait of Lucretia Mott
This short documentary is a window into the Women's Suffrage Movement through the sacrifice of an American Amazon who will inspire today’s woman as much as she did 100 years ago.
Additional Reading from the MY HERO Library
Women's Equality Day
National Women's History Month
Organizer created on 7/9/2019 6:25:30 PM by Xenia Shin
Last edited 2/8/2020 9:07:28 PM by Xenia Shin
