Women and the Right to Vote: The 19th Amendment was a Turning Point in American History

Fred Borch is a lawyer and historian. He was Professor of Legal History and Leadership for 18 years at The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School located at the University of Virginia. He served 25 years in the Army as a uniformed attorney. After retiring from active duty, Fred took a job in the U.S. Government as the only career historian whose focus was exclusively on military legal history. He has seven degrees, including an M.A. in history from the University of Virginia.

One hundred and five years ago, on August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. This was a major turning point in American history, as the amendment’s wording—the “right of citizens . . . to vote shall not be denied . . . by the United States or any state on account of sex”—gave women the right to vote in all Federal and state elections. Millions of eligible voters now were added to the election rolls. The story of the 19th Amendment’s approval is worth remembering today, as its addition to the Constitution was far from inevitable.

Most historians trace the impetus for securing women the right to vote to 1848, when about 300 women (and men) gathered in upstate New York to discuss women’s rights. At the end of what is today known as the Seneca Falls Convention, the participants published a “Declaration of Sentiments” that insisted that American women had a “duty . . . to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.”

With the nation preoccupied with slavery and the Civil War, the women’s suffrage movement languished until 1869, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton (who had been a key player at Seneca Falls in 1848) and Susan B. Anthony were at the head of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). Stanton and Anthony led the charge to press Congress for an amendment to the Constitution that would give women the right to vote. A rival organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), led by Lucy Stone, also was on the political scene, but it focused more on women’s suffrage at the state level.

In 1878, legislation that would have amended the Constitution to enfranchise women was introduced for the first time by U.S. Senator Aaron A. Sargent, a Californian and supporter of women’s suffrage. Sargent’s proposed amendment languished in committee until 1887, when the Senate rejected it.

In 1890, the NWSA and AWSA merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). The focus of this new organization was to persuade state legislators and male voters that American women wanted the right to vote. Their efforts were successful; by 1914, women had the right to vote in eight states. The NAWSA adopted a two-prong strategy of pushing for both federal suffrage (with a U.S. Constitutional amendment) and state suffrage (in those states where women still did not have the right to vote). The NAWSA also worked to elect members of Congress who supported the right of women to vote.

It took changes ushered in by World War I to bring success to the women’s suffrage movement. The NAWSA supported the war effort and, as women entered the workplace to replace men serving in the Army and Navy, the NAWSA insisted that women should get the right to vote as a reward for their support of the war.

In April 1917, the “Anthony Amendment” (named after Susan B. Anthony) was introduced in both the House and Senate. After it failed to pass on five separate occasions, President Woodrow Wilson called a special session of Congress on May 19, 1919 to consider the amendment once again. With Wilson’s support, the amendment passed the House on May 21 and the Senate on June 4.

By June 1920, 35 state legislatures had ratified the amendment. One more was needed—and Tennessee provided the deciding vote in July 1920. Opponents of the Anthony Amendment had blocked its ratification twice by voting to table the matter. When the vote was held a third time, however, 24-year-old Harry Burn, a Republican, changed his vote from “no” to “yes” after he received a note from his mother telling him that women deserved the right to vote. After this, the amendment moved to the Tennessee House of Representatives where, on August 18, 1920, it barely passed by a vote of 50 to 49.

The impact of the 19th Amendment’s passage was immediate, as 26 million women were able to vote in the November 1920 presidential elections. Ultimately, however, the number of women voting was relatively low, with female voters turning out at about 40 percent compared with nearly 70 percent of male voters.

A final note: While the passage of the 19th Amendment was historic in giving women the right to vote, it was White women who were the main beneficiaries. Black women residing in the Jim Crow South did not enjoy the fruits of the 19th amendment until the Civil Rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s enfranchised both them and Black men. Similarly, Latina women and Native American women were often kept from voting by state poll taxes and literacy tests after 1920. Despite these initial mixed results, the 19th amendment is worth remembering and celebrating on its 105th birthday—as it changed the American electorate forever.