August 2020 marks the 100 year anniversary of the Ratification of the 19th Amendment recognizing a woman’s right to vote in the US. This is the shortest Amendment to the Constitution and simply states: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

I am dedicating these socks to two of my heroes: Jeannette Rankin and Shirley Chisholm. Jeannette Rankin was the first woman to serve in the US Congress and was elected before women had the right to vote and was the only women to be able to vote for the passage of the 19th Amendment.

We know that the passage of the 19th Amendment made it illegal to deny the vote based on sex. And the 15th Amendment passed 50 years before made it illegal to deny the vote based on race. So one would think with these two Amendments we were good to go! But alas, reality can often fall short of the ideals in our Constitution and there were many areas of our country that created barriers to voting based on ethnicity. Soon after the Voting Rights Act was passed, Shirley Chisholm took congress by storm. She was also the first African American woman to run for President.

It does not matter to me if I would agree or disagree with everything Representatives Rankin and Chisholm stood for. What I appreciate about both of them is that they refused to hear “you can’t.” They both had strong convictions and they stuck to them. I thank both of them for leading the way and making the path smoother for all women.

The socks are knit top down and there is stranded knitting. If you do not like stranded knitting, use duplicate stitch to add the motifs. The 3 sizes are achieved by changing the needle size. The pattern was written for Magic Loop technique.