Today -100: August 27, 1920: Ratification complete

Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby proclaims the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Suffragists wanted a big ceremony in front of movie cameras, but he just signed it at his home, without any women present, possibly in his underwear.

The anti-suffrage speaker of the Tennessee House, Seth Walker, telegrams Colby, insisting that Tennessee really didn’t ratify because there wasn’t a proper quorum when a motion to reconsider was rejected (because 31 Antis fled the state), so Gov. Roberts was wrong to certify ratification.

Russia accedes to Britain’s demand that it drop from its peace terms for Poland the creation of people’s militias. Foreign Minister Georgy Tchitcherin points out that Britain obviously believes that all workers are Bolsheviks, “a point of view [which] will undoubtedly be welcomed by those who look foeward to spreading Bolshevism in Great Britain.”

Sing Sing executes its first cripple, a man with a wooden leg. Also a black man who I’m guessing is not the first one executed at Sing Sing.

Sinn Féin appoints Hannah Sheehy Skeffington, who was the leading Irish women’s suffrage activist and is widow of Frank, who was extra-judicially executed during the Easter Rising, to the Supreme Court of Ireland. Nothing will come of this.

More sectarian rioting in Belfast, with sniping at soldiers, arson, looting, armored cars firing machine guns, the usual. It began with false rumors that Nationalists stoned children leaving a school.

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