 One of the biggest challenges of writing suffrage history is coming up with enough synonyms for the word badass. These women were so smart and so savvy and so ahead of their time. They were able to make a message go viral in 1917 by stitching it onto a banner. They invented the idea of a civil rights march in Washington, and their lessons are still so relevant. Every time I see a protester in Lafayette Square or hear someone calling out a leader for his hypocrisy by quoting his own earlier words back to him, I'm reminded how these were their ideas and they affected this huge change to American democracy, and of course what the suffragists were fighting for was the 19th Amendment, but when I first got the chance to see the 19th Amendment, I didn't think it would be that big a deal. I thought it was just a piece of paper, well a couple of pieces of paper, and that it was what the 19th Amendment stood for that really mattered, but I have to say when I actually got the chance to see the real 19th Amendment at the National Archives, I was not a badass in any way. I was totally sentimental, just mush all the way through, and how lucky we are to have a place that protects those documents. It's not just a piece of paper, it's vital, it's everything, and it is badass.