Today is the day that the 19th Amendment was certified giving women the right to vote. It is the 90th anniversary of this history changing amendment. Young women looking back can scarcely believe that there was a time when women could not vote because of their gender.
Tennessee was the final and deciding state for ratifying woman suffrage. Historian Howard Zinn has written in his book, A People's History of the United States about "the countless small actions of unknown people that lie at the roots of the great moments of history."
On August 18, 1920, it all came down to one lone vote in the Tennessee House. The youngest member of the House ,Rep. Harry Burn who had voted against ratification in an earlier vote changed his mind. He had received that morning a telegram from his mother saying, "Hurrah and vote for suffrage." With his one vote, women were given the right to participate in governing the U. S.
Today I honor those women who stepped out and marched, wheedled, made speeches, and sent telegrams for this right.
I can only hope that women's equality in churches will someday be celebrated, and young women reading church history can scarcely believe that women were denied the use of the gifts God showered upon them by
mind-closed, self-absorbed men.
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