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49 Vand. L. Rev. 657 (1996)
History of the Women's Suffrage Movement, The

handle is hein.journals/vanlr49 and id is 671 raw text is: ESSAY The History of the Women's Suffrage Movement Sandra Day O'Connor* It is difficult to imagine that only seventy-five years ago, a woman's right to vote was not protected by our Constitution. It is hard to remember that a right I have taken for granted all my life is one that some of our grandmothers never enjoyed. But it is important to remember such things, to celebrate the amendment that extended to women one of the fundamental rights of citizen participation, and to reflect upon how far we have come. In order to appreciate the tremendous progress made by American women in the last century, we should consider the point from which we started. The history of the suffrage movement is a col- orful and entertaining one, and a tale from which we can draw many lessons.' It begins in the late eighteenth century, as this country's po- litical, governmental, and social frameworks were only beginning to take shape. When the wife of future-President John Adams implored her husband in 1776 to remember the ladies2 in drafting our new nation's charter, her plea fell on deaf ears. The American * Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court. This Essay was originally delivered as a speech at a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in Phoenix, Arizona on September 23, 1995. I would like to extend my appreciation to Julia Bunting Shelton and Simon Steel, who provided valuable assistance in the preparation of this Essay. 1. The material for the first part of this Essay is drawn largely from Olivia Coolidge, Women's Rights: The Suffrage Movement in American, 1848-1920 (Dutton, 1966), and Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States (Harvard U., 1975). 2. Flexner, Century of Struggle at 15 (cited in note 1). 657

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