Citation: Joint Resolution of Congress proposing a constitutional amendment extending the right of suffrage to women, approved June 4, 1919.; Ratified Amendments, 1795-1992; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.

Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote.

The 19th amendment legally guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle—victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the mid-19th century, several generations of woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution. Few early supporters lived to see final victory in 1920.

There were supporters that did not live to see the Supreme Court 7-2 decision in 1973 in favor of Jane Roe too, “holding that women in the United States had a fundamental right to choose whether to have abortions without excessive government restriction and striking down Texas’s abortion ban as unconstitutional.” What a travesty that we’ve regressed almost 50 years with the repeal of Roe v. Wade. Now, we have to galvanize and retrace the steps that so many women took to gain our freedoms. It is agonizing on so many levels to be forced to start again! Well, Just is, so we’ve got to deal with it and move forward with vision and determination. Time to finalize that ERA too!