Get out and vote.....

Didja vote today??

I did. I vote whenever there is an election. It is my right and duty as an American Citizen.

It didn't used to be like this for women. Women were not able to vote until 1920.

I am glad to be able to vote.

Here are my previous posts about women's suffrage:

HERE and HERE

Eighty-eight years ago today.

On this date, August 26, 1920, the 19th ammendment was ratified.

I made a post a while ago about woman's suffrage.

Here
is the post.


Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution prohibits each of the states and the federal government from denying any citizen the right to vote because of that citizen's sex.


"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation"

History

The Nineteenth Amendment was specifically intended to extend suffrage to women. It was proposed on June 4, 1919 and ratified on August 18, 1920.

The Nineteenth Amendment was the culmination of the work of many activists in favor of women's suffrage. One such group called the Silent Sentinels protested in front of the White House for 18 months starting in 1917 to raise awareness of the issue.

On January 9, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson announced his support of the amendment. The next day, the House of Representatives narrowly passed the amendment but the Senate refused to even debate it until October. When the Senate voted on the amendment in October, it failed by three votes.[1]

In response, the National Woman's Party urged citizens to vote against anti-suffrage senators up for election in the fall of 1918. After the 1918 election, most members of Congress were pro-suffrage. On May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment by a vote of 304 to 89, and 2 weeks later on June 4, the Senate finally followed, where the amendment passed by a vote of 56 to 25.[2]

It was ratified on August 18, 1920, upon its ratification by Tennessee, the thirty-sixth state to do so. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the ratification on August 26, 1920.

On February 27, 1922, a challenge to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment was rebuffed by the Supreme Court of the United States in Leser v. Garnett.

Women and voting...........

If you are a woman of voting age, read this and vote.
WOW, just WOW.



How Women Got To Vote

A short history lesson on the privilege of voting...

The women were innocent and defenseless. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic." They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror" on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

"Iron Jawed Angels." It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.


HBO will run the movie periodically before releasing it on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunko night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."

These are some great links to read too.


womens suffrage

Alice Paul

Lucy Burns