This Girl Can Vote!
via Atlanta History Center’s “Any Great Change” exhibit. / Atlanta History Center
“If particular care and attention
is not paid to the ladies,
we are determined to foment a rebellion,
and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws
in which we have no voice or representation.”
This Girl Can! Make HERstory!
Our This Girl Can Vote! Collection was inspired by the celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment. Thanks to the courage and determination of so many women over 70 years of protest and perseverance the Constitution was amended to ensure that the right to vote cannot be denied on account of sex. It would be another five decades before the vote was secured for ALL, and the fight continues, but…
This Girl Can Vote!…and She Will!
“We ask justice, we ask equality,
we ask that all the civil and political rights
that belong to citizens of the United States,
be guaranteed to us
and our daughters forever.”
via Library of Congress
“The vote is the emblem of your equality, women of America, the guarantee of your liberty.
Women have suffered agony of soul which you can never comprehend, that you and
your daughters might inherit political freedom.
That vote has been costly. Prize it!
The vote is a power, a weapon of
offense and defense, a prayer.
Understand what it means and what it can do for your country. Use it intelligently, conscientiously, prayerfully.”
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.
XIX Amendment, August 1920
Just Government League of Maryland marching in Washington, D.C., 1920. / via Maryland Historical Society
“And so, lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving, and hoping
that the buds and blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ‘ere long”
Journalist Ida B. Wells in the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. Black women ,many students from HBCUs such as Howard University, marched in integrated sections refusing to march separately. Via NPR
“People say, what is the sense of our small effort?
They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time,
take one step at a time.
A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless.
There is too much work to do.”
via The New York Public Library
“The benefits accruing from this movement
for the equal rights of woman are not confined
or limited to woman only.
They will be shared by every effort to promote the progress and welfare of mankind every where and in all ages.”
via Library of Congress
“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back,
and get it right side up again! ”
Black Women’s Sufrage Event via The Gotham Center for New York City History
““With no sacredness of the ballot, there can be no sacredness of human life itself””
via Library of Congress
“The vote is precious. It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democratic society,
and we must use it.”
Via PA Archive
“The vote is won.
Seventy-two years the battle for this privilege
has been waged, but human affairs with
their eternal change move on without pause.
Progress is calling to you to make no pause. Act!”
“Voting is the only way to ensure
that your concerns matter—Period.
So when you don’t vote, what you’re really doing
is letting someone else
take power over your own life.”
