Throughout the month of March, Miami Dade College (MDC) will offer a variety of exciting, informative and fun events as part of Women’s History Month. This year, MDC will observe the 100th anniversary of the women’s suffrage, under the theme “Valiant Women of the Vote.”
The Nineteenth (19th) Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on Aug. 18, 1920, after a long struggle known as the women’s suffrage movement, prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex.
The amendment, initially introduced in Congress in 1878, remained a controversial issue for more than 40 years, during which the women’s rights movement became strongly militant, conducting campaigns, demonstrations for congressional passage, and ratification by the states. This political action, reinforced by the service of women in industry during World War I, resulted in the adoption of the amendment.
In recognition of this historic milestone, MDC will honor women from the original suffrage movement as well as 20th and 21st Century female activists who have continued the struggle fighting against poll taxes, literacy tests, voter roll purges, and other more contemporary forms of voter suppression to ensure voting rights for all.
They include voting rights activist, writer and founder of Voto Latino, Maria Teresa Kumar; civil rights leader and lawyer, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton; voting rights activist and director of Asian Americans Advancing, Terry Ao Minnis, and Edith Mayo, historian of the women’s suffrage movement and curator at the Smithsonian Museum.
All events are open free to the community, unless otherwise noted, and will take place at all MDC’s eight campuses. For a complete list of events, visit www.mdc.edu/womenshistory.
