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Stories and milestones from the fight for women's voting equality.
Article
Making Them Count:
The Continuing Path to Voting Equality
By Ancestry®
What did the ratification of the 19th Amendment mean to the story of women in America?
Facts
Did you know?
The women's suffrage movement produced the largest one-time increase in voters in American history.
Article
They Would Be Heard: How African American Women Mobilized for Voting Rights
By Henry Louis Gates, Jr
African American women faced racial divisions within the suffrage movement. Explore their fight to overcome obstacles to the ballot.
Article
Through the cracks of the 15th and 19th Amendments
By Henry Louis Gates, Jr
The long and arduous road for African American women and their goal of suffrage for all.
Article
The path to 36: Ratifying the 19th Amendment
By Ancestry®
What if following your mother's advice changed the course of history?
Facts
Did you know?
In 1896, the National Association of Colored Women, led by Mary Church Terell was formed to "secure and enforce civil and political rights."
Article
Votes for Women: Who Could and Couldn't in Your Family History
By Ancestry®
It was November 2, 1920. And women in America were voting in a national election for the very first time.
Facts
Did you know?
The word "Suffragette" originated in the UK as a disparaging term but was quickly adopted by the million protesters. As the suffrage movement grew in the U.S, American women preferred to be called "Suffragists."
Article
What Was Life Like Beyond the Fight for the Ballot?
By Ancestry®
Model Ts were on the streets. Silent movies were all the rage. And mass-produced foods were in the pantry. Records show that suffrage was just one facet of life.
Facts
Did you know?
Beginning on January 10, 1917 suffragists from the National Women's Party, dubbed the Silent Sentinels, were the first group to ever picket the White House.
Slideshow
Illustrating Opinions: Women’s Suffrage Propaganda
By Ancestry®
The struggle for women’s suffrage was contentious. Nothing reveals this more than the cartoons and propaganda surrounding Votes for Women.
Article
How Votes for Women Swept the Nation
By Ancestry®
Before 1920, many women around the country were already making their voices heard in local, state, and even presidential elections.
Article
Women's Suffrage and WWI
By Ancestry®
It created a shift in women’s roles and revealed the hypocrisy of those in power who claimed to be fighting to make the world safe for democracy while denying that right to half the population at home. How the “war to end all wars” helped fuel the battle for suffrage in America.
Video
Honoring Their Pasts at the Polls
By Ancestry® in partnership with MadameNoire
Three women look back at freedom fighters in their family stories for inspiration in As We Climb, a celebration of African American women who helped shape history.
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Suffragist Movement
Making Them Count:
The Continuing Path to Voting Equality
What did the ratification of the 19th Amendment mean to the story of women in America?
By Ancestry®
Updated July 8, 2020
It was a crucial milestone in decades of hard work and struggle for women from a diverse range of backgrounds and perspectives. They shared a common goal: to count in our democracy. And although the road was rocky, together they mapped out a path for the vote for women.
The 19th Amendment by no means addressed or solved all the inequities for women in the 20th century—or even the 21st—but it was an important milestone in the broader story of equality in America. From the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to Virginia’s ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in January 2020, women’s stories are still being written today by women who carry the strength and resilience of the suffragists who led the way. Connecting to their stories—learning who they were and why they mattered—makes them real. And that makes them count.
Suffragist Movement
They Would Be Heard: How African American Women Mobilized for Voting Rights
African American women faced racial divisions within the suffrage movement. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores their fight to overcome obstacles to the ballot.
By Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Published March 3, 2020
Today, when we think of how to make our voices heard from city hall to Washington, most of us probably think of casting ballots on Election Day. Voting is the essence of being—and acting—as a citizen. Yet, the black heroines of our history show us that, even when our rights are unjustly suppressed, there are thunderous other ways to resist. From our founding through the 19th century and most of the 20th century, discriminatory laws excluded African American women in the South from the body politic. After the Civil War, when the 15th Amendment was ratified banning racial discrimination in voting, it only protected the rights of men (though those, too, would be rolled back in practice under Jim Crow).Even after the 19th Amendment made it possible for women to vote, discriminatory state laws kept black women and men out of the voting booth. In short, being a woman kept the blessings of one amendment out of reach, while being black in the former Confederate states stripped away the other.
But that is not the end of the story.
Even though they couldn’t vote, black women acted politically in other, often subversive ways. Take for instance the great Ida B. Wells-Barnett (also known as Ida B. Wells), the journalist and founder of the Free Speech newspaper in Memphis, Tennessee. Wells-Barnett could not vote out the elected officials who did nothing to stop, and in some cases even encouraged, the lynching of African Americans. She protested in other ways, through the courts, and through her pathbreaking work as an investigative reporter.
Black women demonstrated their political prowess in the summer of 1881, when 20 African American laundresses in Atlanta organized the Washing Society, a union, to negotiate higher pay and force employers to treat them with greater respect. They called for a strike, and 3,000 strikers and sympathizers joined the cause in the first three weeks. On August 1, the city passed a punitive $25 licensing fee for laundry services, but the strikers surprised the government by agreeing to pay it so that “We will have full control of the city’s washing at our own prices, as the city has control of our husbands’ work at their prices. . . . We mean business this week or no washing.” The city withdrew the fee two weeks later.
Black women laborers also used their resources and community status to work politically. In August 1896, ex-slave and Nashville washerwoman Callie House founded the National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association of the United States of America, which provided mutual aid for black communities and even called for an early form of reparations. The association held its first convention in the fall of 1898. Along with Isaiah Dickerson, a schoolteacher and minister, House traveled the South forming chapters. The organization counted an estimated 300,000 members by World War I.
Black women tried to fill the political gaps left empty when black men were disenfranchised. As Glenda Gilmore has argued, white men viewed black women as less of a threat then black men, which allowed black women some measure of freedom in their own spaces. Black women organized women’s clubs and associations, combatted male alcoholism through the temperance movement, and organized through their churches. Middle-class African American women utilized the “politics of respectability,” as coined by the brilliant historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, marshaling their education and status to form allegiances with white women and influence white politics without seeming overtly political.
From the pen to the picket line, the courthouse to the club hall, African American women at the nadir of race relations in our history found ways to make their voices heard, despite being denied their most fundamental citizenship right, and as we commemorate the anniversaries of the 15th and 19th Amendments this year, we must also remember those who fell through the cracks and still found a way to resist injustice.
Suffragist Movement
Through the Cracks of the 15th and 19th Amendments
When the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870, men could not be denied the vote based on race. But African American women, who were key to the fight, were no closer to their goal of suffrage for all.
By Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Published March 3, 2020
On February 26, 1869, just a few days before Union war hero Ulysses S. Grant was inaugurated as president, Congress passed the 15th Amendment. It declared: “The right 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 race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
Black men in the former Confederate states had already been registered to vote since 1867, under the terms of military Reconstruction, as prescribed by Congress in the wake of the Civil War. Indeed, they’d been critical in Grant’s election. But this was different. Not confined to any particular states, the 15th Amendment nationalized voting rights as never before. Though it didn’t actually guarantee access to the ballot, it made clear that it could not be denied on the basis of race. Ratified on February 3, 1870, it became part of the Constitution on March 30.
Yet, while African Americans had every reason to celebrate, the amendment failed to protect the right to vote for any women, black or white. As a result, the debates over the 15th Amendment splintered alliances between women’s suffrage and black suffrage activists. In 1869, the white women’s suffrage movement split, with the American Woman Suffrage Association supporting the 15th Amendment and the National Woman Suffrage association, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, opposing it. Stanton used racialized language to make her argument, warning, “The proposed Amendment for ‘manhood suffrage’ not only rouses woman’s prejudices against the negro, but on the other hand his contempt and hostility toward her as an equal . . . the republican cry of ‘manhood suffrage’ creates an antagonism between black men and all women, that will culminate in fearful outrages on womanhood, especially in the southern states.”
Frederick Douglass, easily the most influential African American of the century and a leading abolitionist and suffragist, supported women’s voting rights, but argued that securing the vote for black men took priority. “When women, because they are women, are hunted down through the cities of New York and New Orleans; when they are dragged from their houses and hung upon lamp-posts; when their children are torn from their arms, and their brains dashed out upon the pavement; when they are objects of insult and outrage at every turn … then they will have an urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own.”
Black women suffragists found themselves pulled in different directions. The ex-slave from New York, Sojourner Truth, feared that, without the vote, women would necessarily fail to achieve equality with men, predicting, “...if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before.”
In response, black women formed their own political organizations to promote the idea of suffrage for all men and women, regardless of race. In 1896, the National Association of Colored Women was formed, with Mary Church Terrell as its first president. Under the motto “Lifting as we climb,” the NACW adopted a broad platform, which included, “To secure and enforce civil and political rights for ourselves and our group.”
These efforts culminated in the passage of the 19th Amendment 100 years ago this year, but that proved to be of little help to black women in the South, who were still trapped under Jim Crow rule. In a series of constitutional conventions, some states had disenfranchised black voters by going around the letter of the 15th Amendment by implementing diabolic measures, such as literacy requirements and poll taxes.
When the modern civil rights movement gained steam in the decades after World War II, black women such as Rosa Parks and Ella Baker came to the forefront. And a black woman became perhaps the most dramatic face of black voting rights.
Few scenes evoke the power of African American history like that of Fannie Lou Hamer, the Mississippi sharecropper and leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), testifying that the MFDP should replace the all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. Television cameras broadcast her dramatic speech on her experiences with racial violence and voter discrimination. She explained why the MFDP had made the trip: “All of this is on account we want to register, to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives are threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings in America?”
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 resulted from the protests of women like Hamer, who refused to let the federal government continue to duck the issue. Their road to this influence was arduous and long, and paved by the brave women who risked their own safety to fight for the right to vote. As we commemorate the anniversaries of the 15th and 19th Amendments this year, let us cast our ballots in their honor.
Suffragist Movement
The Path to 36: Ratifying the 19th Amendment
What if following your mother’s advice changed the course of history? For one lawmaker in Tennessee, that’s exactly what happened.
By Ancestry®
Published March 3, 2020
When the 19th Amendment finally passed in Congress on June 4, 1919, it was a win, but the fight for suffrage was still not over. In order to become the law of the land, three-fourths of the then 48 state legislatures would need to vote to ratify the amendment.
By the end of 1919, 22 states had ratified the 19th Amendment. By March 22, 1920, the number stood at 35. Eight states had rejected the amendment by the end of March and all eyes were on the handful of states left. Only one more was needed to give women across the United States the right to vote in every election.
On August 18, 1920, the Tennessee State Legislature was deadlocked. The motion was made to table the amendment.
Harry Burn was only 24 and was the youngest member of the state legislature. He wore a red rose, signaling his opposition to the amendment, but the rose on his chest didn’t mirror the content of the letter in his pocket. It was from his mother, reminding him to “be a good boy” and “vote for Suffrage.” With the final vote, Harry changed his position, voting “Aye” and ending the deadlock. He explained his decision in the House Journal. “I knew that a mother's advice is always safest for a boy to follow and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.”
On November 2, 1920, 8 million women took advantage of the right to make their voices heard by exercising their right to vote. One hundred years later, women’s voices continue to make a difference in the path our country takes, thanks to the hard work of suffragists who fought from 1848 to that fateful August day in 1920.
Suffragist Movement
Votes for Women: Who Could and Couldn’t in Your Family History
It was November 2, 1920. Republican Senator Warren G. Harding, Democratic Governor James M. Cox, and Socialist Eugene V. Debs were on the ballot. And many women in America—maybe even your great-grandmother—were voting in a national election for the very first time.
By Ancestry®
Published March 3, 2020
WWI had ended. And so had a major battle for women’s suffrage that stretched for more than 72 years. While not all women could exercise their right—women of color were still fighting inequality—understanding the impact this important milestone had on your family can bring personal meaning and context to the milestone moment.
To determine which women in your tree had the right to vote in 1920—and who missed out—here are some factors to consider:
Was she 21 in 1920?
Was she a citizen, either native-born or by her or her husband’s naturalization? (Note: Between 1907 and 1922, a woman could lose her citizenship if she married an un-naturalized immigrant, even if she was born in the U.S. or had been naturalized as a minor via her father’s citizenship.)
Native American women were disenfranchised until the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act, but even then some states barred them.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 began excluding Chinese immigrants (and eventually other Asian groups) as well as those already here from U.S. citizenship, keeping most Asian-born women from the vote until its repeal in 1943.
African American women (and men) also met challenges at the polls. With the end of Reconstruction, Southern states began using intimidation, literacy tests, and poll taxes to disenfranchise many black voters until the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Some western states began granting full suffrage to women prior to 1920. In addition, states and localities throughout the country offered partial suffrage to women especially in municipal and school committee elections.
Suffragist Movement
What Was Life Like Beyond the Fight for the Ballot?
By Ancestry®
Published March 3, 2020
When we think of momentous occasions like the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which finally gave women across the United States the right to vote, you have to wonder what it meant for the women in our families. While we can’t just step into a time machine, records can provide a window into their world.
The 1920 U.S. federal census gives a fascinating glimpse into the household, with details like where the family lived, birth dates and places, ethnicity, and whether family members could speak English. For immigrants, when we’re considering whether they were eligible to vote, it lists whether they were naturalized, and the year of their naturalization. (Note: Between 1907 and 1922, a woman could lose her citizenship if she married an un-naturalized immigrant, even if she was born in the U.S. or had been naturalized as a minor via her father’s citizenship.)
Voter registration records can also include insights into how they leaned politically, as well as information about occupations, age, birthplace, addresses, naturalization details, and more, depending on the time and place.
In Pima County, Arizona, the voter registrations for 1920-1922 spanned two pages (be sure to advance to the next page) and even includ1ed a physical description.
Stringing together the facts and details from records can give a fuller picture of a woman in your family’s life. Maybe you can even imagine how she might have felt to enter the ballot booth after the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
Arizona, Voter Registrations, 1866-1955
New York, New York, Voter List, 1924
Missouri, Jackson County Voter Registration Records, 1928-1956
Alabama, Voter Registration, 1867
WEB: Florida, Voter Registration Rolls, 1867-1868
New York State, Address Notification and Absentee Ballot Application Cards, 1944
Savannah, Georgia, Voter Records, 1856-1896, 1901-1917
Texas, Voter Registration Lists, 1867-1869
California, Voter Registers, 1866-1898
Chicago, Illinois, Voter Registration, 1888
Chicago, Illinois, Voter Registration, 1890
Suffragist Movement
Illustrating Opinions: Women’s Suffrage Propaganda
From the first convention in 1848 to the 19th Amendment’s ratification, the struggle for women’s suffrage was contentious. Nothing reveals this more than the cartoons and propaganda surrounding Votes for Women.
By Ancestry®
Published March 3, 2020
Political cartooning and propaganda were nothing new in the early 20th century. But the suffrage movement, both for and against, took full advantage of this powerful form of communication to sway public opinion.
Beyond a difference in messaging, there were unique styles, themes, and coloring adopted by each side.
Much of the pro-suffrage imagery harkens back to classical images, such as “Columbia,” the goddess-like female personification of the United States and Liberty, in the era before Uncle Sam or the Statue of Liberty were created. But cartoonists like Nina Allender also linked votes for women with more modern images—specifically younger, emancipated women taking on new roles in public life.
Propaganda against women’s suffrage focuses on the family in cartoonish parody, and women as either absent, vain and pretty, or old and haggard. Anti-suffrage propaganda was very successful, and its supporters might surprise you. Anti-suffragists were often upper-class women, and their outspoken statements that women did not need or want the vote were effective in stonewalling women’s suffrage for many years. Religious leaders, citing the Bible, were also vocal anti-Suffragists.
Propaganda for women's suffrage
Propaganda against women's suffrage
Suffragist Movement
How Votes for Women Swept the Nation
Before 1920, many women around the country were already making their voices heard in local, state, and even presidential elections. Depending on where they lived, they could have been voting for decades. These are the generations of women in your family.
By Ancestry®
Published March 3, 2020
When the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote was adopted on August 26, 1920, women in some states had already been given that right by the state in which they were residents.
We’ve put together both a chronological timeline, and a state-by-state list so that you can see when the women in your family finally had access to the ballot.
Chronological Timeline
1776-1807
New Jersey’s first constitution granted suffrage to “all inhabitants of this colony, of full age, who are worth 50 pounds.”
1838
Widows with school age children in Kentucky can vote in school elections.
1861
Kansas women can vote in school elections.
1862
Oregon widows with children and taxable property can vote in school elections.
1867
Women taxpayers can vote in school elections.
10 Dec 1869
Wyoming Territory becomes the first state to grant women the right to vote and hold office.
1869
Nebraska grants women the right to vote in school elections.
1870
Utah Territory grants women suffrage.
1875
Women in Michigan and Minnesota are granted the right to vote in school elections.
1876
Colorado women get the right to vote in school elections.
1879
Massachusetts women can vote in school elections.
1880
Tax-paying Vermont women are allowed to vote in school elections.
1880
New York women can vote in school elections.
1883
North Dakota women can vote in school elections.
1883
Washington Territory grants women suffrage.
1886
Wisconsin women can vote in school elections.
1887
Montana Territory and New Jersey grant women the right to vote in school elections.
1887
Women in Utah lose the right to vote, under the terms of the Edmunds-Tucker Act.
1887
Women in Washington Territory lose the right to vote when the Washington Territorial Supreme Court strikes the law that granted it.
1887
Kansas women granted suffrage in municipal elections.
1887
Montana Territory grants women the right to vote in school elections.
1890
Women in Washington get the right to vote in school elections.
1890
Women in Wyoming retain their right to vote when Wyoming becomes a state.
1891
Women can vote in school elections.
1893
Colorado grants women suffrage
1893
Connecticut women can vote in school elections.
1894
Iowa women can vote in municipal and school elections.
1894
Ohio women can vote in school elections.
1896
Utah women win back suffrage with Utah statehood.
1896
Idaho grants women suffrage.
1898
Tax-paying women in Louisiana can vote on taxation referendums.
1898
Taxpaying women in Delaware can vote in school elections.
1909
Connecticut women can vote on library issues.
1910
The state of Washington grants women full suffrage.
1910
New Mexico women allowed to vote in school elections.
1911
California grants women suffrage.
1912
Arizona, Kansas, and Oregon grant women suffrage.
1913
The Territory of Alaska grants women suffrage.
1913
Illinois allows women to vote for president and municipal offices, but not state.
1914
Montana and Nevada grant women suffrage.
Beginning in 1915
Several areas in Florida begin allowing women to vote in municipal elections.
1917
Arkansas women allowed to vote in primaries, but not general elections.
1917
New York grants women full suffrage. It is the first eastern state to do so.
1917
Nebraska, North Dakota, and Rhode Island allow women to vote for president.
1917-1918
Women in Indiana are given the right to vote in certain races, but not all. The legislation that granted that right was repealed in 1918.
1918
Michigan, Oklahoma, and South Dakota grant women suffrage.
1918
Texas women get the right to vote in political primary elections.
1919
Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Tennessee, and Wisconsin allow women to vote for president.
18 Aug 1920
19th Amendment is ratified; grants women the full right to vote across the U.S.
2 Nov 1920
8 million + women cast their vote.
By State
Alabama
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Alaska Territory
1913: Full suffrage
Arizona
1912: Full suffrage
Arkansas
1917: Women can vote in primaries, but not general elections
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
California
1911: Full suffrage
Colorado
1876: Women get the right to vote in school elections.
1893: Full suffrage
Connecticut
1893: Women can vote in school elections.
1909: Women can vote on library issues.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Delaware
1898: Taxpaying women can vote in school elections.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
District of Columbia
1961: Full suffrage with passage of the 23rd Amendment.
Florida
Beginning in 1915: Several areas begin allowing women to vote in municipal elections.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Georgia
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Guam
1950: Women who were born in Guam got the right to vote when the Guam Organic Act went into effect and those born in Guam became U.S. citizens.
Hawaii
1959: Full suffrage with statehood
Idaho
1896: Full suffrage
Illinois
1891: Women can vote in school elections.
1913: Women can vote for president and municipal offices, but not state.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Indiana
1917-1918: Women are given the right to vote in certain races, but not all. The legislation that granted that right was repealed in 1918.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment
Iowa
1894: Iowa women can vote in municipal and school elections.
April 1919: Women can vote for president.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Kansas
1861: Women can vote in school elections
1887: Women can vote in municipal elections.
1912: Full suffrage
Kentucky
1838: Widows with school-age children can vote in school elections.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Louisiana
1898: Tax-paying women can vote on taxation referendums.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Maine
1919: Women can vote for president.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Maryland
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Massachusetts
1879: Women can vote in school elections.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Michigan
1867: Women taxpayers can vote in school elections.
1918: Full suffrage granted by state constitutional amendment.
Minnesota
1875: Women can vote in school elections.
1919: Women can vote for president.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Mississippi
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Missouri
1919: Women can vote for president.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Montana
1887: Montana Territory grants women the right to vote in school elections.
1914: Full suffrage
Nebraska
1869: Nebraska grants women the right to vote in school elections.
1917: Women can vote for president.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Nevada
1914: Full suffrage with amendment of state constitution.
New Hampshire
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
New Jersey
1776: New Jersey’s first constitution granted suffrage to “all inhabitants of this colony, of full age, who are worth 50 pounds.”
1790: Both men and women who own property could vote, but since married women couldn’t own property, only single or widowed women were eligible.
1807: Voting is restricted to tax-paying white male citizens.
1887: Women given the right to vote in school elections.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
New Mexico
1910: Women allowed to vote and run in school elections.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
New York
1880: Women can vote in school elections.
1917: Full suffrage
North Carolina
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
North Dakota
1883: Women can vote in school elections.
1917: Women can vote for president and some local officials.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Ohio
1894: Women can vote in school elections.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Oklahoma
1918: Full suffrage
Oregon
1862: Oregon widows with children and taxable property can vote in school elections.
1912: Full suffrage
Pennsylvania
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Puerto Rico
1929: At urging of U.S. Congress, literate women got the right to vote.
1935: All women can vote.
Rhode Island
1917: Women can vote for president.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
South Carolina
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
South Dakota
1918: Full suffrage
Tennessee
1919: Women can vote for president and in municipal elections.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Texas
1918: Texas women get the right to vote in political primary elections.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Utah
1870: Full suffrage
1887: Women in Utah lose the right to vote with Edmunds-Tucker Act.
1896: Full suffrage with statehood
Vermont
1880: Tax-paying Vermont women are allowed to vote in school elections.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Virginia
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Washington
1883: Washington Territory – Full suffrage
1887: Suffrage law is struck down by state Supreme Court.
1890: Women can vote in school elections.
1910: Full suffrage
West Virginia
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Wisconsin
1886: Wisconsin women can vote in school elections.
1919: Women can vote for president.
1920: Full suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment.
Wyoming
Territory 1869: Full suffrage
State 1890: Full suffrage with statehood
Suffragist Movement
Women’s Suffrage and WWI
It created a shift in women’s roles and revealed the hypocrisy of those in power who claimed to be fighting to make the world safe for democracy while denying that right to half the population at home. How the “war to end all wars” helped fuel the battle for suffrage in America.
By Ancestry®
Published March 3, 2020
As four million men shipped overseas to fight, women covered jobs back home—from shop-keeping to factory work—and served as nurses on the Front. Their contribution became apparent to the public, with newspapers proclaiming, “Who dares to say that war is not a woman’s business?”
Meanwhile, President Woodrow Wilson gave many war-time statements about humanity and defending freedom, while still refusing the women’s vote. The irony was not lost on the suffragists, who used Wilson’s words against him by picketing the White House—the first group to ever do so. Armed with signs and banners, they protested in silence, earning the name “The Silent Sentinels.” Many Sentinels were soon harassed, abused, and imprisoned. Stories of continued abuse—including the “Night of Terror,” in which female inmates were systematically beaten—spurred public support for the women’s cause. Even so, the Sentinels’ protest lasted an astonishing two and half years.
Wilson eventually changed his mind on votes for women and in a speech to the Senate in 1918 argued the 19th Amendment was “vital to the winning of the war.” It took almost another year, until June 4, 1919, for Congress to listen and pass the 19th Amendment, and send it to the states for ratification. A few weeks later, with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the war formally ended.
Women’s actions during WWI, both for war-efforts and for votes, drew attention to gender inequality and made the need for women’s right to vote more apparent than ever before.
Suffragist Movement
Honoring Their Pasts at the Polls
Three women look back at freedom fighters in their family stories for inspiration in As We Climb, a celebration of African American women who helped shape history.