NYT Upfront - "1920 - Women Get the Vote"

September, 2010

After decades of effort by the suffrage movement, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified 90 years ago this summer

By Sam Roberts

Back in July 1776, the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men are created equal, but it didn't say anything about women.

That omission was surely not lost on Abigail Adams. A few months earlier, she had written her husband, John, who was debating independence from England in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, and urged him to "remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors." Otherwise, she warned from their home outside Boston, "we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation."