[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 129 (Thursday, September 23, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1718-E1719]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    COMMEMORATING THE 90TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NINETEENTH AMENDMENT 
                     ESTABLISHING WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. ROSA L. DeLAURO

                             of connecticut

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 23, 2010

  Ms. DeLAURO. Madam Speaker, I rise to commemorate a significant 
milestone in our national story, and to applaud the millions of 
tenacious, tough-minded American women who worked so hard to see it 
accomplished.
  Ninety years ago, our nation ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the 
Constitution, giving women the right to vote all across the country. 
This was an achievement that was years, even centuries, in the making.
  Even before our nation declared independence, the seeds of suffrage 
can be found in the letters of Abigail Adams, when she implored her 
husband John to ``remember the ladies and be more generous and 
favorable to them than your ancestors.'' Its roots took hold at the 
Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, where antebellum reformers argued that 
``all men and women are created equal'' and, in the Declaration of 
Sentiments, first demanded the right to vote. And the movement had 
begun to flower as early as 1869, when Wyoming became the first 
American territory to grant women the vote.
  Over the course of the nineteenth century, committed reformers such 
as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. 
Anthony kept the passion for women's suffrage burning in the American 
imagination. And in the early decades of the twentieth century, a new 
generation of progressive reformers kindled this flame into a wildfire. 
Thanks to

[[Page E1719]]

the hard work of women like Jane Addams, Carrie Chapman Catt, Alice 
Paul, and millions more, women's suffrage at last became the law from 
sea to sea.
  As women took to the polls, women legislators were not far behind. 
The passage of the Nineteenth Amendment paved the way for Jeannette 
Rankin, the first women elected to Congress--she would take office only 
four years later. It paved the way for Ella Grasso of my home state of 
Connecticut, the first women elected Governor independent of her 
husband.
  And it paved the way for a whole host of diverse women leaders who 
have worked to transform American politics, from Bella Abzug, Shirley 
Chisholm, and Patsy Mink to Margaret Chase Smith, Nancy Kassebaum, and 
Connie Morella; from Ann Richards to Hillary Rodham Clinton to our very 
own speaker, Nancy Pelosi.
  Ninety years ago, our nation took another large and important step 
towards fulfilling the promise of the founding--that this was and shall 
always be a land that enshrines freedom, equality, justice, and 
opportunity for every man and every woman. I applaud the millions of 
Americans in our history who worked hard to make women's suffrage a 
reality. And I urge my fellow women to honor this achievement by 
getting engaged in politics, by voting this and every November, and by 
committing to lead us all into the future.

                          ____________________