What Amendment to the U.s. Constitution Gave Women the Right to Vote and in What Year?

The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote, a right known every bit women'south suffrage, and was ratified on Baronial 18, 1920, ending about a century of protest. In 1848, the move for women'south rights launched on a national level with the Seneca Falls Convention, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.

Following the convention, the need for the vote became a centerpiece of the women'south rights movement. Stanton and Mott, along with Susan B. Anthony and other activists, raised public sensation and lobbied the authorities to grant voting rights to women. Later a lengthy battle, these groups finally emerged victorious with the passage of the 19th Amendment.

Despite the passage of the amendment and the decades-long contributions of Black women to reach suffrage, poll taxes, local laws and other restrictions continued to cake women of color from voting. Black men and women also faced intimidation and ofttimes violent opposition at the polls or when attempting to register to vote. Information technology would take more than forty years for all women to accomplish voting equality.

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Women'southward Suffrage

During America's early history, women were denied some of the basic rights enjoyed by male citizens.

For example, married women couldn't own belongings and had no legal claim to any coin they might earn, and no female person had the correct to vote. Women were expected to focus on housework and motherhood, not politics.

The campaign for women's suffrage was a small but growing movement in the decades earlier the Ceremonious State of war. Starting in the 1820s, various reform groups proliferated across the U.Due south. including temperance leagues, the abolitionist motility and religious groups. Women played a prominent function in a number of them.

Meanwhile, many American women were resisting the notion that the ideal adult female was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family. Combined, these factors contributed to a new way of thinking near what information technology meant to be a woman and a citizen in the United States.

READ More than: A Timeline of the Fight for All Women's Right to Vote

Seneca Falls Convention

It was non until 1848 that the motion for women's rights began to organize at the national level.

In July of that year, reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the first women'south rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York (where Stanton lived). More than 300 people—mostly women, but also some men—attended, including former African-American slave and activist Frederick Douglass.

In add-on to their belief that women should be afforded amend opportunities for education and employment, most of the delegates at the Seneca Falls Convention agreed that American women were autonomous individuals who deserved their own political identities.

Declaration of Sentiments

A group of delegates led by Stanton produced a "Declaration of Sentiments" document, modeled afterward the Declaration of Independence, which stated: "We concord these truths to be cocky-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed past their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that amid these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

What this meant, amongst other things, was that the delegates believed women should have the right to vote.

Following the convention, the idea of voting rights for women was mocked in the press and some delegates withdrew their support for the Declaration of Sentiments. All the same, Stanton and Mott persisted—they went on to spearhead additional women's rights conferences and they were somewhen joined in their advancement piece of work by Susan B. Anthony and other activists.

WATCH: Susan B. Anthony and the Long Push for Women's Suffrage

National Suffrage Groups Established

With the onset of the Ceremonious State of war, the suffrage movement lost some momentum, as many women turned their attention to assisting in efforts related to the conflict between the states.

After the war, women's suffrage endured another setback, when the women's rights movement constitute itself divided over the issue of voting rights for Black men. Stanton and some other suffrage leaders objected to the proposed 15th Amendment to the U.Due south. Constitution, which would give Black men the correct to vote, but failed to extend the same privilege to American women of whatever skin color.

In 1869, Stanton and Anthony formed the National Adult female Suffrage Clan (NWSA) with their eyes on a federal constitutional amendment that would grant women the correct to vote.

That same year, abolitionists Lucy Rock and Henry Blackwell founded the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA); the group'due south leaders supported the 15th Amendment and feared it would non pass if it included voting rights for women. (The 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870.)

The AWSA believed women'south enfranchisement could all-time be gained through amendments to private land constitutions. Despite the divisions between the two organizations, in that location was a victory for voting rights in 1869 when the Wyoming Territory granted all-female person residents historic period 21 and older the right to vote. (When Wyoming was admitted to the Union in 1890, women's suffrage remained role of the land constitution.)

Past 1878, the NWSA and the collective suffrage movement had gathered enough influence to anteroom the U.Due south. Congress for a constitutional subpoena. Congress responded by forming committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate to study and debate the issue. Yet, when the proposal finally reached the Senate floor in 1886, information technology was defeated.

In 1890, the NWSA and the AWSA merged to form the National American Adult female Suffrage Association (NAWSA). The new arrangement's strategy was to lobby for women's voting rights on a state-by-state basis. Within six years, Colorado, Utah and Idaho adopted amendments to their state constitutions granting women the right to vote. In 1900, with Stanton and Anthony advancing in age, Carrie Chapman Catt stepped upwardly to pb NAWSA.

Blackness Women in the Suffrage Movement

During debate over the 15th Subpoena, white suffragist leaders like Stanton and Anthony had argued fiercely confronting Black men getting the vote earlier white women. Such a opinion led to a intermission with their abolitionist allies, similar Douglass, and ignored the distinct viewpoints and goals of Black women, led past prominent activists like Sojourner Truth and Frances E.W. Harper, fighting alongside them for the right to vote.

As the fight for voting rights continued, Black women in the suffrage motion continued to experience discrimination from white suffragists who wanted to distance their fight for voting rights from the question of race.

Coil to Continue

Pushed out of national suffrage organizations, Black suffragists founded their own groups, including the National Association of Colored Women Clubs (NACWC), founded in 1896 by a group of women including Harper, Mary Church building Terrell and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. They fought hard for the passage of the 19th Amendment, seeing the women'due south right to vote as a crucial tool to winning legal protections for Black women (as well as Blackness men) confronting continued repression and violence.

READ More than: five Blackness Suffragists Who Fought for the 19th Amendment

State-level Successes for Voting Rights

The plough of the 20th century brought renewed momentum to the women's suffrage crusade. Although the deaths of Stanton in 1902 and Anthony in 1906 appeared to exist setbacks, the NASWA under the leadership of Catt achieved rolling successes for women'southward enfranchisement at state levels.

Betwixt 1910 and 1918, the Alaska Territory, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, Northward Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota and Washington extended voting rights to women.

Also during this time, through the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women (afterwards, the Women's Political Matrimony), Stanton's daughter Harriot Stanton Blatch introduced parades, pickets and marches as ways of calling attention to the cause. These tactics succeeded in raising awareness and led to unrest in Washington, D.C.

Protestation and Progress

On the eve of the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, protesters thronged a massive suffrage parade in the nation's upper-case letter, and hundreds of women were injured. That same year, Alice Paul founded the Congressional Wedlock for Woman Suffrage, which afterward became the National Woman's Party.

The organisation staged numerous demonstrations and regularly picketed the White Firm, among other militant tactics. As a result of these actions, some grouping members were arrested and served jail time.

In 1918, President Wilson switched his stand up on women'south voting rights from objection to support through the influence of Catt, who had a less-combative style than Paul. Wilson too tied the proposed suffrage amendment to America's interest in World War I and the increased role women had played in the war efforts.

When the subpoena came up for vote, Wilson addressed the Senate in favor of suffrage. As reported in The New York Times on October 1, 1918, Wilson said, "I regard the extension of suffrage to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged."

Notwithstanding, despite Wilson'due south newfound support, the amendment proposal failed in the Senate past two votes. Another yr passed earlier Congress took upwardly the measure again.

READ More: The Women Who Fought for the Vote

The Final Struggle For Passage

On May 21, 1919, U.S. Representative James R. Mann, a Republican from Illinois and chairman of the Suffrage Committee, proposed the House resolution to approve the Susan Anthony Amendment granting women the right to vote. The mensurate passed the House 304 to 89—a full 42 votes above the required two-thirds majority.

2 weeks later, on June 4, 1919, the U.S. Senate passed the 19th Amendment by 2 votes over its 2-thirds required majority, 56-25. The amendment was and so sent to united states of america for ratification.

Inside six days of the ratification cycle, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin each ratified the amendment. Kansas, New York and Ohio followed on June 16, 1919. Past March of the post-obit year, a total of 35 states had approved the amendment, just shy of the 3-fourths required for ratification.

Southern states were adamantly opposed to the amendment, however, and seven of them—Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia—had already rejected it before Tennessee's vote on August 18, 1920. It was upward to Tennessee to tip the scale for woman suffrage.

The outlook appeared dour, given the outcomes in other Southern states and given the position of Tennessee's country legislators in their 48-48 tie. The land's decision came downwards to 23-year-old Representative Harry T. Burn, a Republican from McMinn Canton, to cast the deciding vote.

Although Fire opposed the subpoena, his female parent convinced him to approve it. Mrs. Burn reportedly wrote to her son: "Don't forget to be a expert boy and help Mrs. Catt put the 'rat' in ratification."

With Burn'south vote, the 19th Amendment was fully ratified.

READ More: How American Women'southward Suffrage Came Down to Ane Man's Vote

When Did Women Get the Right to Vote?

On August 26, 1920, the 19th Subpoena was certified by U.S. Secretary of Land Bainbridge Colby, and women finally achieved the long-sought right to vote throughout the U.s.a..

On November 2 of that same year, more than viii 1000000 women across the U.S. voted in elections for the commencement time.

It took over lx years for the remaining 12 states to ratify the 19th Subpoena. Mississippi was the last to do so, on March 22, 1984.

What Is the 19 Amendment?

The 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote, and reads:

"The right of citizens of the The states to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the U.s.a. or by any state on business relationship of sex. Congress shall accept power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

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Source: https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/19th-amendment-1

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