First Lady Michelle Obama affirms that “No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half its citizens.”

Early in our history, ideas and debates about the abolition of slavery spread and burst into flame in the 19th century. Women who battled to eradicate slavery include Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Catherine Coffin, and Harriet Jacobs. I urge you to learn about their brave lives and contributions.

Abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe’s most famous book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852, shone a searing light on the cruelty of slavery. Millions read it. During the 19th century, it was second, after the Bible, in sales in the U.S. and is still in print. Uncle Tom’s Cabin rallied abolitionist sentiment in both America and Great Britain in the pre-Civil War era. When Harriet Beecher Stowe visited Abraham Lincoln in the White House in 1862, he said, “So this is the little lady who made this big war.”

From the American Revolution to the present day, women have battled to secure the same political, economic, and social rights as men. The women’s suffrage movement was a decades-long struggle to win the right for women to vote in the United States. The aftermath of the Civil War infused that movement with additional energy. In 1870, Black men achieved the vote, but a half century elapsed before the suffrage movement reached its goal. That happened on August 28, 1920, with the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which proclaims, “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.”

The journey toward women’s enfranchisement was long and arduous and pioneered by determined activists known as suffragettes. Some suffragettes endured fines, forced feeding, beatings, and imprisonment, including solitary confinement.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton led the early battle for women’s suffrage and for the abolition of slavery. She and Lucretia Mott organized the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, the nation’s first. women’s rights meeting. The convention passed a resolution in favor of women’s suffrage, despite opposition from some of its organizers, who believed the idea was too extreme. In 1869, Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association, for which Stanton served as president for more than 30 years.

Susan B. Anthony dedicated over 50 years of her life to the women’s suffrage cause through writings, speeches, petitions, and an arrest for illegally voting in the 1872 presidential election. Anthony played a pivotal role in paving the path for the 19th Amendment.

Carrie Chapman Catt re-invigorated the stagnant women’s suffrage movement in the early 1900s as a skilled activist and organizer. Succeeding Susan B. Anthony as the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Chapman Catt trained women for direct political action to get women’s suffrage added to the national party platforms and founded the League of Women Voters.

The tireless efforts of these determined leaders, along with countless other women (and men) devoted to the movement, paved the way for the 19th Amendment, which was ratified in 1920, marking a monumental achievement for equality and justice for all Americans.

One striking pattern of the American presidency is that no woman has occupied that office. It’s not that they haven’t tried. In 1872, more than a 150 years ago, Virginia Claflin Woodhull, an activist in the suffrage movement, became the first woman to run for president as a member of the National Equal Rights Party. Following the path that Woodhull blazed, other notable women stepped up as candidates for the presidency, including Belva Lockwood, who, in 1884 and 18888, also ran for president as an Equal Rights Party candidate.

Republicans Carly Fiorina (2016) and Nikki Hailey (2024) have run for president, while Democrats Shirley Chisholm (1972, the first Black major-party candidate), Carol Mosely Brown (2004), Amy Klobuchar (2020), and Elizabeth Warren (2020) have also run for that office.

Democrat Hillary Clinton (2008 and 2016) became the first woman nominated for president by a major party, and Democrat Kamala Harris became our first female vice president (2021) and second woman nominated for president by a major party.