Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 106 Part 6.djvu/831

 PROCLAMATION 6463—AUG. 10, 1992 106 STAT. 5389 sinki Final Act. As we Americans observe this day with appropriate programs and activities, let us remember all those courageous individuals and groups of individuals who have made tremendous sacrifices to secure the freedoms that we enjoy. The God-given and inalienable rights affirmed in our Declaration of Independence and guaranteed by our Constitution are rights that many people in the world still struggle to obtain. Building on the foundation Uiat was laid at Helsinki 17 years ago and that was fortified there last month, let us recommit ourselves to making peace and liberty the common heritage of all. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty- eighth day of July, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and seventeenth. GEORGE BUSH Proclamation 6463 of August 10, 1992 Women's Equality Day, 1992 By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation "1 believe in woman's suffrage, because I believe in democracy." With these words. Congressman M. Clyde Kelly of Pennsylvania summarized the convictions of countless Americans who supported the adoption of the 19th Amendment to our Constitution. This Amendment, which was passed by the Congress in June 1919, ratified by the Tennessee legislature on August 20, 1920, and officially declared part of our Constitution six days later, guaranteed for women the right to vote. The adoption of the 19th Amendment marked a long-awaited triumph for members of the woman's suffrage movement and the beginning of ever greater participation by women in the day-to-day process of government. By the time the proposed Amendment was presented to the States for ratification—some 40 years after it had been introduced in the Congress—women had won equal suffrage in 15 States and in the Alaska Territory. Women could vote in Presidential elections in 12 other States and in primary elections in two States. Yet, after years of hard work at the grassroots level, suffragettes and their supporters knew that full, effective recognition of women's right to vote depended on action at the Federal level. To allow the question to be resolved arbitrarily, by the individual States, would refrite the idea of women as coheirs to the God-given and unalienable rights enshrined in our Nation's Declaration of Independence and guaranteed by our Constitution. Proponents of the 19th Amendment understood that, as long as women were disenfranchised in any State, our Nation deviated from the principles on which it was founded—including the belief that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Explaining the link between woman's suffrage and the preservation of democracy. Representative Kelly said:

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