100 Years of Women’s Right to Vote Celebrated on Broadway

“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.” 
– 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Women’s Right to Vote (1920)

SARATOGA SPRINGS — A celebration marking Women’s Equality Day and the centennial of the formal certification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was held across the country on Aug. 26. 

In Saratoga Springs, a 12-hour gathering was staged at Palette, a female-focused coworking space and café on Broadway, where a full slate of events kicked-off with an 8 a.m. morning meditation, and featured a series of Q & A sessions and panel discussions with local political office-holders, healing energy practitioners, business leaders, and activist, among others.

The 19th amendment gave women the right to vote following several decades of struggle for women’s suffrage – a movement founded in the mid-19th century and spearheaded by people like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. 

While certified as an amendment in 1920, historians also point to the 1965 Voting Rights Act some 45 years later as finally outlawing discriminatory voting practices that restricted black men and women from voting. 

A new interactive website celebrating historic New York State suffragists was also launched in conjunction with Women’s Equality Day that includes historic and biographical information, and an interactive map with cemetery and gravesite locations about women and men who were active in the suffrage movement. That website can be found at: womenandthevotenys.com.