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Right to Vote
Women organized, petitioned, and picketed to win the right to vote. -
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19th Amendment Bethani House
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Seneca Falls
The suffrage resolution passes by a narrow margin, helped along by the support of the famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass, an early ally of women’s rights activists. -
Formation of AWSA
The American Woman Suffrage Association was formed after the split of the American Equal Rights Association. The group was led by Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell. They believed strongly in suffrage for women. Unlike the NWSA, they focused on getting voting rights for women by working through the state legislatures. -
Foundation of the NSWA
The National Woman Suffrage Association was formed during this year. The group was led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. This group focused on getting women the right to vote through a federal constitutional amendment. The women involved in the group attempted many unsuccessful court challenges during this time. The case they were trying to make was that the 14th and 15th Amendment together served to guarantee women the right to vote. -
Wyoming Passes Women's Suffrage Law
Tensions erupt within the women’s rights movement over the recently ratified 14th Amendment and the proposed 15th Amendment, which would give the vote to Black men, but not women. Stanton and Susan B. Anthony found the National Woman Suffrage Association to focus on fighting for a women’s suffrage amendment to the Constitution, while Lucy Stone and other more conservative suffragists favor lobbying for voting rights on a state-by-state basis. -
Interview with Susan B. Anthony
Reporter: "When women get the ballot, what use will they make of it, what good to they propose to accomplish?" Susan: "They propose to do away with vice and immorality, to prevent the social evil by giving women remunerative employment; to forbid the sale of spirituous liquors and tobacco, and to teach men a higher and nobler life than the one they now follow." -
Suffragists Arrested for Voting in NYC
Anthony and more than a dozen other women are arrested in Rochester, New York after illegally voting in the presidential election. Anthony unsuccessfully fought the charges, and the court fined her $100, which she never paid. -
California Senate Drafts Amendment
Drafted by Stanton and Anthony, it reads: “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 sex.” (When Congress passes the amendment 41 years later, the wording will remain unchanged.) -
Amendment First Proposed to Congress
Women were finally on the path to gaining the right to vote after all of their struggles. -
Amendment Rejected
The proposal was considered by the Senate and rejected in a 16 to 34 vote in October of 1887. The amendment was again rejected by the Senate in 1914. On January 12, 1915 the amendment was again proposed to the House but was once again rejected. Two years later it was proposed once again, but the outcome was a bit different. -
NAWSA Forms
The two sides of the women’s movement reunite, forming the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). With Stanton as president, the organization focuses on a state-by-state fight for voting rights. -
Colorado
Colorado became the 1st state to ratify the 19th amendment. -
Black Suffragists Organize National Groups
A group of women including Harriet Tubman, Frances E.W. Harper, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell form the National Association of Colored Women Clubs (NACWC). In addition to women’s enfranchisement, the organization advocates for equal pay, educational opportunities, job training and access to child care for Black women. -
Utah and Idaho
Utah and Idaho follow Colorado in adopting the 19th amendment. -
Black Suffragists Barred from Conventions
African-American women fighting for the right to vote continue to face discrimination from white suffragists, especially as the latter group seeks support in Southern states. In 1901 and 1903, the NAWSA conventions in Atlanta and New Orleans bar Black suffragists from attending. -
States begin to consider ratifying amendments
The time from 1887 to 1910 was called the "doldrums" where the amendment received no recognition from Congress. The women's rights activists didn't achieve much during this time either. But around 1910 and 1911, many western states began to give women the right to vote. This can be credited to the election in 1912 and the rise of the Progressive and Socialist parties. -
Alice Paul creates Militant Group
Impatient with the pace of the state-by-state fight for suffrage, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns break from NAWSA and found the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (later the National Woman’s Party) to press for federal action. -
Jeanette Rankin Elected into Congress
Jeanette Rankin of Montana, a former NAWSA lobbyist, becomes the first woman elected to Congress. With the U.S. entrance into World War I, NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt commits the organization to working toward the war effort. -
Women's Suffrage Groups
Most women's suffrage organizations were uniting to get the 19th amendment passed. -
Night of Terror
On November 14, 1917, guards at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia beat and terrorize 33 women arrested for picketing, an ordeal that will become known as the “Night of Terror.” -
New York
New York adopted Women's Suffrage -
President Wilson Changes Positions
President Wilson officially changes his position to support a federal women’s suffrage amendment. -
President Wilson Supports Womens' Suffrage
In January 1918, Rep. Rankin opens debate in the House of Representatives on a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing women’s suffrage. -
Amendment Proposed again
The amendment was proposed before the House once again. President Wilson supported the amendment and strongly encouraged the House to pass it. The amendment was passed by 2/3 of the House and then went to the Senate. On September 30, President Wilson once again made an appeal, but the bill was short by two votes so it was not passed. A year later, in February, it was voted on again, but this time fell short of being passed by only one vote. -
House and Senate Pass Amendment, Ratification Efforts.
On May 21, 1919, the House again passes what would become the 19th Amendment, popularly known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. -
House of Representatives Passed Amendment
The House of Representatives finally passed the proposal of the 19th Amendment. -
Needed of 3/4 of states statement
Adding the amendment to the US Constitution required passage by two-thirds of each chamber of Congress, then ratification by three-fourths of the states, which in 1919 was 36 of the 48 states. (Alaska and Hawaii were still US territories.)The House had passed it one time before in early 1918, but the Senate had not followed suit. Would it pass the amendment this time? Would 36 states ratify the amendment? -
Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin
Although Illinois had voted for ratification earlier in the day, an administrative error meant that they had to redo the vote a week later. That made Wisconsin the first across the finish line in the race to ratification. Later in the day, Michigan lawmakers voted unanimously to ratify. Other than these three states, only Pennsylvania and Massachusetts legislatures were in session that June, but other state governors were considering calling special sessions to vote on the amendment. -
Five More States Ratify
The first month of the new decade brings ratification from Kentucky, Rhode Island, Oregon, Indiana and Wyoming, and rejection from South Carolina. -
35 States Rafity, one more needed.
By the end of March, Virginia, Maryland and Mississippi have also voted against ratification. But Nevada, New Jersey, Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Washington ratify, bringing the total to 35 states—one short of the goal needed for the amendment to become law. -
Delaware's Vote against Ratification Starts a Blow
Delaware’s vote to reject ratification shocks suffragists, and deals a serious blow to their momentum. Suddenly, the fate of the suffrage amendment appears in doubt. Anti-suffrage sentiment runs high in most of the states left to vote: State legislatures in Connecticut, Vermont, Florida decline to consider the amendment, leaving only North Carolina and Tennessee, with North Carolina sure to reject. -
Tennessee Provides Final Vote
The Tennessee Senate votes to ratify, but the vote is tied in the House—until one legislator, Harry Burns, changes his vote after receiving a letter from his mother urging him to vote for women’s suffrage. On August 18, 1920, one day after the North Carolina legislature rejects the suffrage amendment by two votes, Tennessee becomes the 36th state to ratify. -
19th Amendment is officially official
The Secretary of State, Bainbridge Colby signs the amendment into law. -
Ratification!
On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment. 50 of 99 members of the Tennessee House of Representatives voted yes. This gave the amendment the approval of 3/4 of the states, which it needed to be ratified. The rest of the states eventually followed in Tennessee's footsteps. -
Amendment Takes effects
Eight days after Tennessee ratified the amendment it became official. On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment was official. This gave women the right to vote. This marks the day in which the 19th Amendment was added to the Constitution. This shows that if you work hard enough at something and believe in it, anything is possible. -
Natives Recognized as Citizens
Four years after the 19th Amendment is ratified, passage of the Snyder Act (aka the Indian Citizenship Act) makes Native Americans U.S. citizens for the first time. But many Native American women (and men) are still effectively barred from voting for the next four decades, until Utah became the last state to extend full voting rights to Native Americans in 1962. -
The repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943
The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers. -
The adoption of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952
The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (Pub. L. 82–414, 66 Stat. 163, enacted June 27, 1952), also known as the McCarran–Walter Act, codified under Title 8 of the United States Code (8 U.S.C. ch. 12), governs immigration to and citizenship in the United States. -
24th amendment
When the 24th Amendment was ratified in 1964, five states still retained a poll tax: Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia. The amendment prohibited requiring a poll tax for voters in federal elections. But it was not until 1966 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in Harper v. -
Voting Rights Act Protects all Citizens' Rights to Vote
After a century of struggle by Black women (and men) against poll taxes, literacy tests and other discriminatory state voting laws, President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965. -
Mississippi Becomes the Last US State to Ratify the 19th Amendment
Mississippi formally ratifies the 19th Amendment on March 22, 1984, becoming the last U.S. state to do so.