Women’s Suffrage: A Long Time Coming Just A Short While Ago

With our Independence Day celebrations this year, our country turned 239 years old. Yet next month will mark only the 95^th anniversary of women getting suffrage-the right to vote.  Female citizens had to wait 144 years before securing the right to vote, it was a long fought effort and extremely overdue.

On August 18, 1920, the 19^th Amendment became federal law. The 19^th Amendment reads: “The right of citizens to vote shall not be abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Incredibly, these very words were proposed once a year for 41 years before the amendment was passed by the U.S. Congress on June 4, 1919. The two-thirds majority of states needed to ratify the amendment was met 14 months later by Tennessee in 1920.

The historical vote cleared the Tennessee House by one vote. Records verify that the deciding vote was cast by Harry Burns, 24. The junior representative carried a letter from his mother urging him, “Don’t forget to be a good boy. Vote for suffrage.”

Anthony, Cady Stanton, and Stone

The Women’s Suffrage movement has a recorded beginning in 1848 when the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women’s rights convention, passed a resolution in favor of women’s right to vote. Two national suffrage organizations were established in 1869. The competing organizations were formed, one led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the other led by Lucy Stone.

After years of bitter rivalry they merged in 1890 as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) with Anthony as its leading force. That was an important year for NAWSA when the Territory of Wyoming was granted statehood. As the 44th U.S. state, Wyoming immediately granted women the right to vote. Within ten years the NAWSA influenced three other states to grant suffrage to women--Utah, Colorado and Idaho. No other states joined in the big move to give women voting equality until the Federal Government made it a law.

NAWSA struggled for 30 years to promote women’s right to vote. The Suffragettes, which they called themselves, staged parades, rallies and events that often got them arrested. The group leaders encouraged civil disobedience, and local laws regarding assembling unauthorized groups often were ignored.

The leaders of NAWSA knew that they had to convince people in small towns to join the cause of women’s rights. Getting both men and women committed at the grass roots level of society was the core of their strategy. Many people considered the idea of women’s suffrage a radical change of the U.S. Constitution.

The movement lasted so long from its early start in the mid-1800’s that few of the early supporters lived to see the final victory. Mothers passed the spirit of suffrage to their daughters and granddaughters. When women’s freedom to vote finally happened in 1920 it enfranchised all American women by declaring they, like men, deserved the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. 

Thanks for reading this blog. Come back to this space later this month for information about how France shipped its gift of The Statue of Liberty to New York. You can also visit my website at www.joevlatino.com for a sample of my short stories.