19th Amendment
Floor Speech
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I come to the floor today, on June 4, to take a look back at a very historic vote by the U.S. Senate. This vote changed the course of political history in America. It strengthened the social fabric and constitutional framework of our Republic.
One hundred years ago today, lawmakers in this body cast a vote for liberty and equality under the law. The Senate approved Federal suffrage legislation. At the time it was passed, it was known as the Susan B. Anthony amendment. Today it is better known as the 19th Amendment to our U.S. Constitution.
Section 1 of the 19th Amendment reads: ``The right of the 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.''
By adopting the measure, the 66th U.S. Congress paved the way for women's suffrage from sea to shining sea. At the time, more than a dozen States and Territories allowed full suffrage, led by the Western States of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho.
In 1919 both Chambers of Congress were led by Republican majorities. The House of Representatives adopted this constitutional amendment 304 to 89 on May 21. Two weeks later the Republican Senate voted 56 to 25 in favor of women suffrage. That was two votes more than the necessary two-thirds vote required under our Constitution.
Both U.S. Senators from my State of Iowa voted for passage. Senator William Kenyon, then the junior Senator from Iowa, later went on to serve as a Federal judge for the Eighth Circuit.
The other aye vote from Iowa was cast by my predecessor, meaning he was the only other Senator from Iowa to serve in the position I now serve in as President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate. That senior Republican Senator from Iowa was a former Governor of Iowa, Albert Baird Cummins.
To a full Gallery packed with suffragists, Senator Cummins, as President pro tempore, announced final passage of the suffrage amendment. It was reported on June 5 in the New York Times that Iowa Senator Cummins, presiding over the U.S. Senate, allowed visitors in the Gallery to celebrate with ``deafening applause,'' and he made no effort to stop the celebration.
As President pro tempore, Senator Cummins from Iowa was present at the enrollment ceremony, watching over the shoulder of Vice President Thomas Marshall, who signed this historic bill.
After the Senate passed it, it was then sent to the States for ratification. In a special session of the Iowa General Assembly, my State became the tenth State to ratify the 19th amendment on July 2, 1919, less than a month after the U.S. Senate had approved it.
Suffragists and supporters continued the campaign they started in the Hawkeye State prior to World War I. They mobilized support among farmers to pave the way to the ballot box for women. The future Secretary of Agriculture under President Harding championed women's rights to vote in his widely circulated farm journal. Henry C. Wallace of Des Moines wrote:
I do not know how we can have a government of the people, for the people and by the people, until women have an equal voice with men. They are fully as competent as men to use that ballot wisely.
Now, others invoked the patriotism, service, and sacrifice of women during World War I. Another compelling argument reminded Americans that, without the ballot, women suffered taxation without representation. All Americans will recall that the battle cry of taxation without representation also paved the way to America's road to independence from Great Britain, declared in July of 1776.
Two days after Iowa ratified the 19th amendment, Americans celebrated our Nation's 143rd year of independence on the Fourth of July. One hundred years later, we are 1 month away from celebrating our Nation's 243rd year of independence. Wow, what a difference a century can make.
The historic passage of the 19th amendment pulled back the curtain to the voting booth and cracked open the glass ceiling for women to serve in public office. Today one-fourth of the U.S. Senate are women, including my colleague from Iowa, Senator Joni Ernst. She is also the first female combat veteran elected to serve in the U.S. Senate.
In the 116th Congress, 102 women are now serving in the House of Representatives, including two women from Iowa, Representative Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne.
In the last election, Iowans elected our first female Governor, Kim Reynolds, one of nine women now serving as chief executive of their respective States.
Today I pay tribute to all those who blazed the trail to the ballot box and helped secure women's right to vote.
At long last, the sacred right of franchise became a reality for all Americans. It had been sought by women since the American Revolution. Through the decades, it gained momentum through relentless advocacy at the grassroots.
A lot of credit is due to organizers of a convention called the Seneca Falls Convention in New York State in the summer of 1848. Just think how long that was before the 19th amendment was finally adopted. In 1848 this convention lit a flame that became inextinguishable. They launched a civic movement for the ages with enough oxygen to become a grassroots prairie fire.
For more than half a century, this organization of mostly women organized with petitions, parades, and protests, building momentum and constituencies at the State and Federal level. These early suffragists succeeded in laying a cornerstone of equality for generations to come. One of the most fundamental rights of self-government is the right to vote, and ratification of the 19th amendment enshrined their sacred civic duty into our founding charter of freedom.
I often say that the ballot box holds elected Members of Congress to account for the decisions we make on behalf of those we represent. Our institutions of government, civic organizations, system of free enterprise, places of work, schools, communities, and, most importantly, families are stronger thanks to the suffragists of our history.
The road to ratification came down to a tie-breaking vote in Nashville, TN. A young member of the State legislature broke a deadlocked vote that otherwise would have tabled the measure. His name was Harry Burn, a 24-year-old Republican from East Tennessee.
The morning of the vote, he received a note from his mother. She invoked the name of a famous suffragist with long ties to my home State of Iowa. You hear it along with Susan B. Anthony, but not as often. The name of that Iowa woman is Carrie Chapman Catt. If you want to visit her historic farm home, you can go to Charles City, IA, and visit where she grew up and lived.
Mrs. Burns, the mother of that young Tennessee State legislator, implored her son to ``be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the `rat' in ratification.''
Representative Burns credited his tie-breaking vote to the influence of his mother, to justice, and for the legacy of the Republican Party. In a statement explaining his vote, Representative Burn wrote:
I appreciated the fact that an opportunity such as seldom comes to a mortal man to free seventeen million women from political slavery was mine. . . . I desired that my party in both State and nation might say that it was a republican from the East mountains of Tennessee . . . who made national woman suffrage possible. . . .
On August 18, 1920, the Volunteer State became the 36th State to ratify the amendment, securing the three-fourths of the States required under the U.S. Constitution.
When the U.S. Secretary of State certified the results 8 days later, the 19th amendment became the law of the land. It ensured men and women in America would share equal rights to this fundamental civic right.
Like Harry Burn, I have a personal story about my mother. My mother influenced my interest in government. For as long as I can remember, she sowed the seeds of my quest for public office and a commitment to public service.
For years, she taught students in a one-room schoolhouse about the three R's--reading, writing, and arithmetic--as well as lifelong lessons of civic responsibility. At home, she taught the Grassley kids around the kitchen table to stand up for our beliefs. Those teachings were to choose right over wrong, to waste not, want not, and to value hard work and the value of hard-earned money. She practiced what she preached, putting honesty and integrity first and foremost.
This photo I have beside me today was published in the Des Moines Register on August 30, 1920. Approximately 8 or 10 days after Tennessee ratified it but only 1 day after the secretary of State of the State of Iowa said women could now vote, we have this photo of my mother voting. It sets the scene of a historic day near my family farm.
A local woman named Mrs. Jens G. Theusen, of Fairfield Township, located in Grundy County, IA--I live just across the county line in Butler County--submitted her ballot in a country school in what I think was a school election.
She was one of the first women to vote after the newly ratified 19th Amendment.
My own mother, Ruth Corwin Grassley--referred to here as Mrs. L. A. Grassley, after Louis Arthur Grassley, my dad--also cast a history- making vote that day in a local election.
This picture says this is my mother here, but this is my mother right here. So the Des Moines Register was wrong in identifying this person, when this person is my mother. The Waterloo Courier got it right that this was Ruth Grassley, but instead of with two s's, the Waterloo Courier spelled it with one s.
The Waterloo Times Tribune was present at this vote and reported that ``Black Hawk and Grundy County women gained fame Friday by being the first in the state and probably the first in the nation to take advantage of the privilege of equal suffrage.'' That is from the Waterloo paper.
You would think that I would have known about this while my mother was living. I didn't know anything about it. I have since learned that this photo was widely distributed in newspapers across the country, illustrating the historic victory of women's suffrage.
This election in Iowa was held just 29 hours after the official announcement of the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
This photo of my mother also immortalized her vote for posterity. She did so without any fanfare. She never bragged about anything, including her history-making vote in the local election. In fact, it wasn't until after she had passed away by maybe 20 years that I learned that my mother, Ruth Grassley, was one of the very first women in Iowa to cast her vote.
While I was growing up, I didn't realize what a trailblazer she was from the standpoint of women's suffrage. I knew she was a trailblazer in many other ways. Many suffragists wore their mission as a badge of honor for all to see. With 50 years of fighting to get it, I sure don't blame them for doing that. Others, like my mother, were equally as proud to carry out their newfound right and civic duty in anonymity. I am not surprised I never knew this story about my mother. My mother cast her vote to make her voice count, perhaps not even realizing she was making history at that moment.
Today, at this moment, I stand here as an Iowa farm boy, a proud son of a very early voter in Iowa--one of the first four, according to the Des Moines Register--and a U.S. Senator from Iowa because I want to share her story on the centennial anniversary marking Senate passage of the 19th Amendment.
As Americans, we celebrate the Founding Fathers who enshrined the principles of limited government, free enterprise, and personal responsibility in our Constitution. Let us also pay tribute, then, to our founding mothers who fought and who secured these cherished blessings of freedom and liberty for their daughters and granddaughters yet to come in the same document. Today, we remember their legacy. Let's respect their legacy.
A century after the Senate voted in favor of the 19th Amendment--on this very day 100 years ago--I encourage all Americans to treasure their right to vote. The suffragists of yesterday helped shape the course of history to ensure all Americans today and for sure in the future will carry the torch of freedom, liberty, justice, and opportunity for all for generations to come.
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