#TBT: Women Win The Right To Vote

     Woodrow Wilson was certainly fond of women. Having lost his wife of nearly 30 years and the mother of his three children, Ellen, in 1914, he proclaimed the first Mother's Day that year. On women's suffrage, he remained quiet for much of his life. Personally for it for over a decade, he said it should be a state matter in the 1912 and 1916 presidential elections. By midway through his second term, however, he was vocally for the right of women to vote, speaking before Congress in 1918 urging them to pass the nineteenth amendment until the Senate ultimately passed it in 1919 and it went into effect in on August 18th, 1920, 101 years ago today.

     Wilson usually gets all the credit, and he certainly deserves a small amount. However, the suffrage movement needs to be a reminder that Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Belva Lockwood, Victoria Woodhull, Harriet Tubman, and countless thousands of others fought for nearly 50 years for the right to vote and that women still face obstacles not presented to men, including the pay gap and a lack of representation in most professions.