Ninety-nine years ago this week, U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified that the required three-quarters of states had ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote nationwide. The date of his pronouncement, August 26, is now celebrated as Women’s Equality Day, even though suffrage was limited to white women in parts of the country for many years after 1920.

One day after the Nineteenth Amendment took effect, 77 women were among 214 residents of Black Hawk and Grundy counties who cast ballots in a local referendum on school consolidation. One of the first women to exercise their right to vote in that election was Ruth Corwin Grassley, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley’s mother.