Issue Date: May 28, 1998
City: Washington, DC
Quantity: 12,533,000
Printed By: Ashton-Potter (USA) Ltd
Printing Method: Lithographed
Perforations: 11.5
Color: Multicolored

 

It all began in 1848, in the small town of Seneca Falls, New York. There, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized a Women’s Rights Convention, after not being allowed to vote at the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention. The purpose for the Women’s Rights Convention was to forever change the role of women, from sheltered and silent wives and mothers to productive and contributing members of society.

 

Some opponents of the suffrage movement felt that women did not possess the common sense to vote. Other people used the argument that men were somehow saving women from the “contaminating and demoralizing” responsibility of having to vote.

 

On the other hand, supporters believed that women were more qualified than men to vote based on a somewhat higher moral character. Others thought that women, as white people born in this country, had more rights to vote than newly emancipated slaves or recently naturalized immigrants, both of whom had the right to vote by the late 1800s.

 

Finally, on August 18, 1920, after years of protest on both sides, the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution gave women the right to vote – an important step toward equality for American women.