TODAY: Today is Women’s Equality Day.

According to the National Women’s History Alliance, in 1973, the U.S. Congress designated August 26 as “Women’s Equality Day.”

The date was selected to commemorate the 1920 certification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote. This was the culmination of a massive, peaceful civil rights movement by women that had its formal beginnings in 1848 at the world’s first women’s rights convention, in Seneca Falls, N.Y.

The observance of Women’s Equality Day not only commemorates the passage of the 19th Amendment, but also calls attention to women’s continuing efforts toward full equality.

The Department of Defense Education Activity website offers this about today: “Women’s Equality Day gives us an opportunity to reflect on the continuing struggle for equality in the workplace and the role of women in our public life. Women in public service and government have long served this nation by working to clear barriers, enforce laws, implement new ideas, and change people’s attitudes.”

Today “commemorates the struggles of women to be heard, as fierce advocates who gained the statutory right to vote. Also, known as women’s suffrage, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guarantees all American women the right to vote. The Amendment changed Federal law and the face of the American electorate forever. Women won legal recognition as equal citizens under the 19th Amendment. While women in some states could already vote before 1920, women in some states—particularly those of color—were blocked from voting after ratification.”

The rights of Native American women weren’t recognized until 1924, for Chinese American women, 1943, and other Asian American women, 1952.

“It wasn’t until passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, that African American women were granted the right to vote.”