1919
Congress passes the 19th Amendment
The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing women
the right to vote, is passed by Congress and sent to the states for
ratification.
The women’s suffrage movement was founded in the mid-19th
century by women who had become politically active through their work in the
abolitionist and temperance movements. In July 1848, 240 woman suffragists,
including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, met in Seneca Falls, New
York, to assert the right of women to vote. Female enfranchisement was still
largely opposed by most Americans, and the distraction of the North-South conflict
and subsequent Civil War precluded further discussion. During the
Reconstruction Era, the 15th Amendment was adopted, granting African American
men the right to vote, but the Republican-dominated Congress failed to expand
its progressive radicalism into the sphere of gender.
In 1869, the National Woman Suffrage Association, led by Susan
B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was formed to push for an amendment to
the U.S. Constitution. Another organization, the American Woman Suffrage
Association, led by Lucy Stone, was organized in the same year to work through
the state legislatures. In 1890, these two societies were united as the
National American Woman Suffrage Association. That year, Wyoming became the
first state to grant women the right to vote.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the role of women in
American society was changing drastically; women were working more, receiving a
better education, bearing fewer children, and several states had authorized
female suffrage. In 1913, the National Woman’s party organized the voting power
of these enfranchised women to elect congressional representatives who
supported woman suffrage, and by 1916 both the Democratic and Republican
parties openly endorsed female enfranchisement.
In 1919, the 19th Amendment,
which stated that “the rights 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,” passed both houses of Congress and was sent to the states for
ratification. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the
amendment, giving it the two-thirds majority of state ratification necessary to
make it the law of the land. Eight days later, the 19th Amendment took effect.