the nineteenth

"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."

Today marks the 90th anniversary of the 19th amendment, ending a good 70+ years of struggles for the suffrage movement. It's interesting, for such a large occasion, there was no ceremony, no photographers, no pen distribution. The Secretary of State at the time, Bainbridge Colby signed the proclamation at 8 a.m. in the morning at his home. Colby drank a cup of coffee and signed the document with an ordinary, steel pen. Then he said, "I turn to the women of America and say: 'You may now fire when you are ready. You have been enfranchised.'"

All those years of struggles ends anticlimactically with a cup of coffee, a stroke of a pen, and a little quote.