19th Amendment: Winning the Women’s Suffrage Movement

Until the 19th Amendment was passed in August of 1920, American women were denied many basic rights freely enjoyed by men, including the right to own property, the right to keep their own wages and the right to vote in state and federal elections.

Seneca Falls Convention

While The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 was the first formal ignition point in the women’s suffragette movement, it would take an additional 72 years of organized protest before American women at long last gained the right to vote. Organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, the Seneca Falls Convention was attended by 300 men and women, including former African-American slave and activist Frederick Douglass, who would support the women’s suffrage movement until a rift developed after the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870, which gave black men the right to vote, while continuing to block women from the ballot box.

Women’s Suffrage Associations

In response, Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, while Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell founded the American Woman Suffrage Association, both organizations believing passionately that women’s voting rights could best be achieved at the state level, thereby forcing the federal government to follow suit.

Wyoming would be the first state to grant voting rights to women in 1869, followed by Colorado, Utah and Idaho.

The night before Woodrow Wilson’s 1913 inauguration, violent protesters assaulted a massive suffragette parade in Washington, D.C., injuring hundreds of female marchers, which in turn led to an increased sense of militancy within the suffragette movement.

That same year, Alice Paul formed the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage—later renamed the National Woman’s Party—leading to numerous protests in front of the White House, which frequently resulted in arrests and jail time. After America entered the First World War, Woodrow Wilson shifted his support to the suffrage movement in October of 1918, announcing in a New York Times interview that:

“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.”

Woodrow wilson

When was the 19th Amendment Passed?

On May 21st, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the Susan Anthony Amendment by more than two-thirds majority vote, followed by the U.S. Senate on June the 4th, 1919, finally signed into law on August 26, 1920, making the suffragette movement one of the longest inequity battles in American history.