Mayor Vincent Gray has officially declared today, August 26, Women’s Equality Day in D.C.

Women’s Equality Day celebrates the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, in August 1920. As each president has done since 1971, Barack Obama released a proclamation to mark the occasion.

When women are given the opportunity to succeed, they do. Younger women graduate college at higher rates than men and are more likely to hold a graduate school degree. They are nearly half our workforce, and increasingly they are the primary breadwinner for families. But too often, the women and girls who lift up our Nation achieve extraordinary success only after overcoming the legacy of unequal treatment.

Check out the gallery above to see Library of Congress photos from a 1917 protest at the White House by the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage.

Filed Under: suffrage, women's equality day,