Floor Remarks by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Senate President Pro Tempore
“250th Anniversary – Celebrating American History”
Tuesday, December 16, 2025
This summer marks an important milestone in the great American experiment. On July 4, 2026, our country will celebrate the 250th anniversary of our founding.
A nation founded on the universal principle that all people have inherent God-given rights. To protect those rights, our forefathers established a democratic republic.
Throughout the year, communities from ‘sea to shining sea’ will hold events celebrating our rights and freedoms.
This is also a fitting time to reflect on our nation’s history.
The story of America is filled with acts of courage and righteous struggles.
America has not always lived up to its high ideals. However, the principles laid out in its founding documents have proved enduring.
The declaration that “all men are created equal… endowed … with certain unalienable rights,” life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This has been successfully wielded to secure freedoms for those overlooked at the nation’s founding. One of those overlooked things that we’re not very proud of, not proud of at all, is slavery.
In a speech delivered in 1852, the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass quoted these words to land a damning blow against slavery.
His Fourth of July speech made it patently clear that the practice of slavery was an afront to the universal principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Independence was also influential to the women’s suffrage movement. It was used as the model for the movement’s Declaration of Sentiments, which was signed at the first women’s rights convention, organized by women in 1848.
Now, the history of the suffrage movement has a special place in my heart.
So, I’m going to show you a four-page story from the Des Moines Register, August 30, 1920. You can see the same picture in the Waterloo Courier. This woman is Mrs. Louis Grassley, my mother.
Now, August 30 is one or two days after the secretary of state of the United States government informed the secretary of state of Iowa that women could vote. And there was an election in Blackhawk in Grundy County that my mother participated in, one day after the secretary of state said that women could vote.
I think this goes back a couple weeks before that because Tennessee, by a one-vote-margin, was the 36th state of the 48 states, at that particular time, that was the last state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. And I presume it took a couple weeks to get out to the states to take a vote. So I presume that on August the 29th or even as late as August 30...my mother was voting.
So, my mother, Ruth Corwin Grassley, was, as I just told you, one of the very first women, for sure in Iowa, but maybe in the entire United States, to cast a vote after ratification of the 19th Amendment.
And I just showed you in the Des Moines Register, and I have the exact same picture in the Waterloo Courier, it verifies what I just told you.
The Waterloo Times Tribune reported this quote: “Black Hawk and Grundy County women gained fame Friday by being the first in the state, and probably the first in the nation, to take advantage of the privilege of equal suffrage.”
Growing up, I was unaware that my mother took part in this history. In fact, this picture came to my attention probably 20 years after my mother’s death.
She never bragged about anything, so I’m not surprised that we didn’t hear about this part of her life in history.
She took pride in being a dedicated schoolteacher. She instilled in her students and her own children lifelong lessons of civic responsibility.
I imagine she saw herself as simply exercising her freedom to vote to make sure her voice counted.
To honor my mother and all suffragettes, I proudly cosponsored the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commemorative Coin Act.
It was enacted at the end of 2019. The bill authorized the U.S. Mint to issue special edition silver dollar coins commemorating the adoption of the 19th amendment in 1920.
This program resulted in the sale of over 56,000 coins, with a portion of the proceeds directed toward the Smithsonian’s American Women’s History Initiative.
The U.S. Mint is now set to commemorate like coins for the nation’s 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence.
This includes five quarter designs emblematic of this historic anniversary and commemorative dollar coins.
My understanding is the original five quarter designs depicted historic American events, such as women’s suffrage and abolition.
Now, I’m obviously here because I’m very much interested in the fact that it doesn’t look like they’re going to have a women’s suffrage coin.
However, the current Treasury Department abandoned the designs that were first suggested and the women’s suffrage coin was one of those.
In my view, this is a very big mistake. The forthcoming anniversary is the perfect time to honor the historical events that made America what it is today.
The historic victory won by suffragettes after more than 140 years of fighting for the right to vote is as worthy as any.
While Treasury has since finalized five different quarter designs, it has yet to announce final designs for other commemorative coins.
To correct their mistake, Treasury officials should consider honoring the suffrage movement and other worthy events as part of the 250th anniversary commemorative dollar coin program.
So, you can see that I’m kind of shocked that the executive branch of government would change what was studied for a while and suggested. It didn’t meet the ideology of this administration...
But I think we have to remember that in the preamble to the Constitution, it didn’t say that we are going to create a perfect union. We are going to work towards a more perfect union. And when we forget the work of women for 140 years that tried to get the right to vote and one of [the suffragettes] is from the county next to the county I’ve spent 92 years in, living in Iowa, we take great pride in what it took to get the 19th Amendment adopted.
So, I hope I can get some reconsideration on the part of the administration about honoring the suffragettes with a coin, at this particular time.
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