 Hello, I'm Kareem Porter, curator of rightfully hers American Women in the Vote, the National Archives Special Exhibition to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. The 19th Amendment, which effectively secured women's right to vote in the United States Constitution, was not easily won. For more than 70 years, a diverse group of activists used a multitude of strategies to win voting rights for women. One focused on winning the vote at the national level. Others appealed to the states for women's admission to the polls. They lobbied privately in their parlors and publicly in the halls of Congress. They wrote articles and circulated petitions, preached from soapboxes and pulpettes, organized mass of marches, and suffered jail terms. These efforts secured piecemeal victories that gave millions of women the vote before 1920, and that made possible the triumph of the 19th Amendment. However, despite the 19th Amendment's dramatic expansion of the electorate, the constitutional guarantee that the right to vote shall not be denied on the basis of sex did not protect every American woman's access to the polls. Millions of women, especially women of color and poor women, continued to be denied the vote for reasons other than sex. Many of these women fought an ongoing battle against their disfranchisement, the lasted decades beyond 1920, and for some continues to this day. As we commemorate this milestone anniversary, I encourage you to not only honor the woman suffragists whose persistence made the 19th Amendment possible, but the generations of Americans throughout our history that kept up the relentless struggle to secure not only their place at the polls, but yours and mine as well.