Women’s Equality Day comes but once a year. It’s an opportunity to celebrate the brave women and acquiescent men who brought us the 19th Amendment, which was declared part of the Constitution on August 26, 1920.

Call me old-fashioned, but on this girl power holiday, I like to remember Susan B. Anthony’s “Women Are Persons” speech—”It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union!”—and the painfully shy eighth grader who recited it with remarkable vigor in my classroom two years ago. (I’m a former teacher.) She got a standing ovation and, of course, an A.