U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the Nineteenth Amendment as part of the Constitution, guaranteeing American women the constitutional right to vote.
On August 26, 1920, U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed the official proclamation certifying that the Nineteenth Amendment had been ratified by the requisite number of states and was now part of the United States Constitution. This certification came just eight days after Tennessee's pivotal ratification vote, finalizing decades of struggle for women's suffrage.
The amendment's text is simple but profound: '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. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.' With this certification, an estimated 26 million American women became constitutionally entitled to vote in elections, including the imminent 1920 presidential election between Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox.
August 26th is now commemorated annually in the United States as Women's Equality Day, established by congressional resolution in 1971 at the urging of Representative Bella Abzug. The certification represented the largest single expansion of voting rights in American history to that point, though significant barriers—including poll taxes, literacy tests, and outright intimidation—continued to disenfranchise many women of color, particularly in the South, for decades afterward, pointing to the incomplete nature of the victory and the ongoing work of the civil rights movement.