How Women Made the Moral Case for Suffrage

On this day, designated Equality Day in 1971, our nation officially celebrates a century of women’s suffrage. The suffragists worked for seventy years to convince both males and other females that women ought to share in the political responsibilities of republican government. The arguments that won the day one hundred years ago should help us think correctly about rights today.  

We usually remember Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul for this feat. And well we should. Anthony's tactical intelligence, gift for strategy, influential newspaper, and indomitable spirit forged with Stanton a successful campaign—one that Paul would bring to completion. Yet too often we assume that it was only their particular arguments that brought about the state-by-state support that federal ratification required. This is too simplistic a view.