The 26th of August:
At the behest of Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY), in 1971 the U.S. Congress designated August 26 as "Women's Equality Day."
The date was selected to commemorate the 1920 passage 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, New York.
Shocking to think that there are still people alive in this country who were born before women could vote on our shared common matters. But it's also very salutary to remember how very young and fragile this whole business of empowering women really is, and how idiotic it is to read all those stories which wonder why a few decades of feminism didn't change every single thing about women's lives in this country. These things take a very long time, and vigilance is still the price of liberty.