Washington, D.C. – Today, the House of Representatives is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment. Chairman of the Women’s Suffrage Commission and Heritage Foundation President Kay Coles James released the following statement:
We commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first major step in adopting the 19th Amendment: the passage of the resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives. As the chairman of the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission, I can attest to the fact that today’s anniversary celebration, as well as the nationwide celebration in 2020 of the full ratification of the 19th Amendment, has truly been a bipartisan effort. I want to thank Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader McCarthy for that effort.
This centennial celebration ensures that we don’t forget the sacrifices, struggles, and the hard-fought victory to secure women’s right to vote. The men and women who fought for that right did so because they believed the best way to change laws that treated women as second-class citizens was to have power over those who made the laws. I know that the leaders of the early women’s movement would certainly be proud to know that today, the women’s vote outnumbers that of men and that women are vigorously exercising the franchise that they fought so hard to secure.
