Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Bainbridge Colby Certifies the Nineteenth Amendment
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗No cameras, no suffragists, no ceremony. The secretary of state signed at home — eight days after the state vote that had actually finished the job.
26 August 1920: signed quietly at home
Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed a proclamation on the morning of 26 August 1920 certifying that the Nineteenth Amendment had been ratified by the required 36 states. He signed at his Washington home, without a public ceremony or photographers, and despite suffragists' hopes to attend.
No grand signing photograph exists as a result. Colby reportedly considered effectuating suffrage more important than reenacting it for movie cameras.
Eight days after the vote that counted
Ratification had been completed on 18 August, when Tennessee became the 36th state to approve. Governor Albert H. Roberts signed the state's certificate on 24 August, which let the federal government certify the completed ratification.
The proclamation did not create the amendment's legal force. Supreme Court amendment jurisprudence treats consummated ratification, not the secretary of state's later proclamation, as controlling.
What the certified text covered
The proclamation certified that the prohibition against denying or abridging a citizen's vote on account of sex had become part of the Constitution. About 26 million adult women were nominally eligible to vote after adoption — but many already voted under state law, and others remained excluded by citizenship rules and discriminatory practices.
That night Colby appeared at a National American Woman Suffrage Association mass meeting and read a congratulatory message from President Woodrow Wilson.
Sources
Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 2 audit passes
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →
What the sources leave uncertain
- August 26 is securely established as the certification and proclamation date, not the date on which the thirty-sixth state ratified.
- The Supreme Court's amendment jurisprudence treats consummated ratification, rather than the later secretary of state's proclamation, as controlling. Constitution Annotated likewise describes the Nineteenth Amendment's prohibitions as effective upon ratification.
Checked against
- National Archives — 19th Amendment Milestone Document
- Library of Congress — Nineteenth Amendment Signed Without Fanfare
- Constitution Annotated — Early Twentieth-Century Amendments
- Constitution Annotated — Overview of the Nineteenth Amendment
- National Archives — Amendments 11–27
- PBS American Experience — Not All Women Gained the Vote in 1920