On this day in 1884, Susan B. Anthony addressed the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives. She argued for an amendment to the US Constitution that would grant women the right to vote. Her speech was delivered 16 years after legislators first introduced a federal woman's suffrage amendment.

16 Years. For the four days prior to meeting with Congress, Anthony took part in the National Woman Suffrage Association's sixteenth annual convention in Washington, D.C.

What She Told Congress. " This is the sixteenth year that we have come before Congress in person, and the nineteenth by petitions. Ever since the war, from the winter of 1865-'66, we have regularly sent up petitions asking for the national protection of the citizen's right to vote when the citizen happens to be a woman. We are here again for the same purpose.

More Than 16 Years. It took more years of arguing before the suffrage amendment passed on June 5, 1919, long after Susan B. Anthony had died.

Ratified at Last. On August 26, 1920, the states ratified it as the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. That November, over 8 million American women voted for the first time in history. Thomas Jefferson proclaimed equality as the bedrock of the government, yet it took 144 years for American women to attain full citizenship. Susan B. Anthony, who, together with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, worked hardest for that goal, never had the opportunity to cast their votes.