On August 26, 1920, the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, otherwise known as the Nineteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution. The Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote. Susan B. Anthony died in 1906. She died 13 years before women were granted the right to vote. She died without ever once having enjoyed the privilege for which she labored all of her life.
As we approach the millennium, we at Tidewater NOW take this opportunity to remember a woman of great courage and perseverance. We look back because the past helps us to gain a better understanding of the struggles that we as feminists encounter today.
Throughout her struggles Susan B. Anthony and the early suffragettes were mocked, insulted, assaulted and subjected to various hostile responses. They lobbied not just for the right to vote.
They lobbied so that married women could own property of their own. They lobbied so that married women could maintain custody of their children in divorce. They lobbied for equal pay. Their struggles did not end with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendments.
Today the struggle endures. Susan B. Anthony was a woman who dared. Today's feminists stand shoulder to shoulder with the suffragettes of the past. Like Susan B. Anthony, we may not live to see the ERA or total equality. However, we are heirs to a fine tradition. If we persist, as Susan B. Anthony said, "failure is impossible."