Wichita Falls chapter of the LWV to celebrate Women’s Equality Day Aug. 23

WICHITA FALLS, Texas (KAUZ) - News Channel 6 sat down with Rosemary Capps, a member of the local chapter of the League of Women Voters, to discuss its event celebrating Women’s Equality Day.

The celebration will occur at Vernon College Century City, room 605, on Aug. 23 at 10:30 a.m. Kay Yeager will be the guest speaker, among other local leadership.

According to Capps, the event is an important reminder of women’s power in shaping the country. “We’ve gained a lot of things by having more women vote,” she said, “A lot of women died to support [the right to vote].”

Women’s Equality Day, observed on Aug. 26 this year, commemorates the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which prohibits the government from denying the right to vote based on sex. It was passed in 1920, giving women the power to vote for more than 100 years.

According to the Library of Congress, the women’s suffrage movement began after an 1840 World Anti-Slavery Congress in London, where Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott were denied participation because they were female, even though they were delegates for the convention.

Mott and Stanton held the first American women’s rights conference in Seneca Falls, which led to the creation of the Declaration of Sentiments. The Declaration listed voting rights and other reforms women demanded as part of the movement.

Women held regular women’s rights conferences throughout the States and formed the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1890 by joining protest tactics from two groups.

Women continued campaigning for the right to vote throughout World War I, proposing constitutional suffrage amendments to Congress until it was finally passed in 1919.

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