Nineteenth Amendment (1920): American Women Win the Vote

The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government and the states from denying citizens the right to vote on account of sex. It was ratified on 18 August 1920, when Tennessee became the 36th state to approve it by a margin of a single vote, and was certified eight days later. It completed a campaign that had lasted more than 70 years and roughly doubled the American electorate, although many women of colour were still kept from the polls.

Background

The organised movement for women’s suffrage in the United States is usually dated to the Seneca Falls Convention in New York in July 1848, where Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others issued a Declaration of Sentiments that included a demand for the vote. After the Civil War, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments protected the voting rights of Black men but not women, which split the movement for a generation.

In 1878 Senator Aaron Sargent of California introduced an amendment drafted by Susan B. Anthony and Stanton, almost word for word the text later adopted. It was rejected by the Senate in 1887 and then largely ignored. Suffragists turned to the states instead. Wyoming had enfranchised women as a territory in 1869, and Colorado (1893), Utah and Idaho (1896) followed. By 1919, women could vote in all elections in around 15 states, most of them in the West, giving them real political weight in Congress.

The final push

In 1890 the rival suffrage groups united as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Under Carrie Chapman Catt, who became its president again in 1915, NAWSA adopted a “Winning Plan” in 1916 that combined state campaigns with a disciplined lobbying effort in Washington for the federal amendment.

A younger, more militant wing was led by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, who had worked with the suffragettes in Britain. They organised a large suffrage procession in Washington on 3 March 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, and founded what became the National Woman’s Party. From January 1917 their “Silent Sentinels” picketed the White House. After the United States entered the First World War, pickets carrying banners that compared Wilson to the Kaiser were attacked by crowds; many were arrested, and imprisoned suffragists, including Paul, went on hunger strike and were force-fed.

Women’s war work strengthened the case, and in September 1918 Wilson addressed the Senate in favour of the amendment as a war measure. The House of Representatives had passed it in January 1918, but the Senate fell short of the required two-thirds majority in October 1918 and again, by one vote, in February 1919. The newly elected Congress passed it at last: the House on 21 May 1919 and the Senate on 4 June 1919, by 56 votes to 25.

The opposition

Suffragists faced organised resistance, including from women. The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, founded in 1911 by Josephine Dodge, argued that most women did not want the vote, that politics would harm family life and that women already exercised influence through charity and civic work. Its members wore red roses as their emblem.

Other opponents had more material motives. Brewers and distillers feared that women voters would support Prohibition, which in the end arrived first, through the Eighteenth Amendment of 1919. Political machines in the cities worried about an unpredictable new electorate. Above all, many white southern politicians feared that a federal amendment would open the door to federal scrutiny of the laws that kept Black citizens from voting, and they framed their opposition as a defence of states’ rights.

The ratification battle

Three-quarters of the 48 states, or 36, had to ratify. Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan did so within days, and by March 1920 there were 35 ratifications. Most of the southern states rejected the amendment, often arguing that it violated states’ rights and fearing that it would threaten the exclusion of Black voters.

The decision fell to Tennessee, where the governor called a special session in August 1920. Suffragists, who wore yellow roses, and opponents, who wore red ones, packed Nashville. The state Senate approved the amendment, but in the House two motions to table it ended in 48–48 ties. On 18 August the House voted on ratification itself. Harry T. Burn, at 24 the youngest member and expected to vote against, voted yes, and the amendment passed 49 to 47. Burn later explained that he had followed the advice of his mother, who had written urging him to support suffrage.

Opponents tried to reverse the vote and some left the state to deny the House a quorum, but on 26 August 1920 Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the amendment without ceremony. That date is now marked as Women’s Equality Day.

Limits of the victory

The amendment forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, but it did not guarantee that every woman could vote. In the South, Black women, like Black men, were largely kept from the polls by poll taxes, literacy tests, white primaries and violence; Black women who tried to register in 1920 were often turned away. Full protection came only with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Many Native Americans were not citizens until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, and some states barred them from voting until the 1940s and later. Asian immigrants were excluded from naturalisation until 1943 for Chinese, 1946 for Filipinos and Indians, and 1952 for others. Women’s turnout in the first elections was lower than men’s, and the united “women’s vote” that both supporters and opponents had predicted did not appear.

Myths and facts

It is often said that American women “got the vote” in 1920. In fact, millions of women in western states had voted for years, and Jeannette Rankin of Montana had been elected the first woman in Congress in 1916. What the amendment did was forbid any state from excluding voters because of their sex, making women’s suffrage national and permanent.

Another popular idea is that the suffrage movement was united. In reality its leaders disagreed sharply over tactics, with NAWSA preferring patient lobbying and the National Woman’s Party favouring public protest, and some white suffragists accepted or exploited racist arguments to win southern support. Black suffragists such as Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell campaigned both for the vote and against this exclusion.

Key people

• Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947), president of NAWSA and architect of the Winning Plan; she later founded the League of Women Voters.
• Alice Paul (1885–1977), leader of the National Woman’s Party, who went on to propose the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923.
• Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), president who moved from reluctance to support for the federal amendment in 1918.
• Harry T. Burn (1895–1977), Tennessee legislator whose vote secured ratification.

Timeline

• 1848, 19–20 July: The Seneca Falls Convention demands votes for women.
• 1869, December: Wyoming Territory grants women the vote.
• 1878, January: The Anthony amendment is first introduced in Congress.
• 1913, 3 March: The suffrage procession marches in Washington.
• 1917, January: The Silent Sentinels begin picketing the White House.
• 1919, 4 June: The Senate passes the amendment, sending it to the states.
• 1920, 18 August: Tennessee becomes the 36th state to ratify.
• 1920, 26 August: The amendment is certified.
• 1920, 2 November: Women vote nationwide in a presidential election for the first time.

Why it matters

The Nineteenth Amendment was the largest single extension of voting rights in American history and placed the United States among the wave of countries, from New Zealand to Britain and Germany, that enfranchised women around the First World War. Its uneven reach also shows why the struggle for voting rights continued for decades, as seen in later campaigns such as Swiss women’s suffrage in 1971.