[Congressional Bills 109th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.J. Res. 59 Enrolled Bill (ENR)]
H.J.Res.59
One Hundred Ninth Congress
of the
United States of America
AT THE FIRST SESSION
Begun and held at the City of Washington on Tuesday,
the fourth day of January, two thousand and five
Joint Resolution
Expressing the sense of Congress with respect to the women suffragists
who fought for and won the right of women to vote in the United States.
Whereas one of the first public appeals for women's suffrage came in
1848 when Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton called a women's
rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19, 1848;
Whereas Sojourner Truth gave her famous speech titled ``Ain't I a
Woman?'' at the 1851 Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio;
Whereas in 1869, suffragists formed two national organizations to work
for the right to vote: the National Woman Suffrage Association and
the American Woman Suffrage Association;
Whereas these two organizations united in 1890 to form the National
American Woman Suffrage Association;
Whereas in 1872, Susan B. Anthony and a group of women voted in the
presidential election in Rochester, New York;
Whereas she was arrested and fined for voting illegally;
Whereas at her trial, which attracted nationwide attention, she made a
speech that ended with the slogan ``Resistance to Tyranny Is
Obedience to God'';
Whereas on January 25, 1887, the United States Senate voted on women's
suffrage for the first time;
Whereas during the early 1900s, a new generation of leaders joined the
women's suffrage movement, including Carrie Chapman Catt, Maud Wood
Park, Lucy Burns, Alice Paul, and Harriot E. Blatch;
Whereas women's suffrage leaders devoted most of their efforts to
marches, picketing, and other active forms of protest;
Whereas Alice Paul and others chained themselves to the White House
fence;
Whereas the suffragists were often arrested and sent to jail, where
many of them went on hunger strikes;
Whereas almost 5,000 people paraded for women's suffrage up
Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC; and
Whereas on August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the United States
Constitution granted women in the United States the right to vote:
Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America in Congress assembled, That it is the sense of
Congress that women suffragists should be revered and celebrated for
working to ensure the right of women to vote in the United States.
Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Vice President of the United States and
President of the Senate.