The year 1917 was very important for the suffrage movement. Having lost the chance to defeat the reelection of President Woodrow Wilson, who had initially been lukewarm towards suffrage, campaigners set out to guarantee women’s suffrage in the 1920 presidential election.
A wing of activists began a daily picket of the White House, the first in American history. Another organized a lobbying campaign to win congressional votes. Then, in April of the same year, the United States entered the First World War, and whatever political will had been built for the emancipation of women, it evaporated.
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LEARN MORE: & nbsp;American women have fought for suffrage for 70 years. It took World War I to finally get there
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LEARN MORE: & nbsp;The night of terror: when the suffragists were imprisoned and tortured in 1917
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On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, freeing all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
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READ MORE: The Night of Terror: When the Suffragists were Imprisoned and Tortured in 1917
New York was the richest and most politically powerful state in the union. Henceforth, its delegation of 46 people, the largest in Congress, was responsible to voters, men and women. Barely two months later, the only member of Congress, Jeannette Rankin of Montana (a state where women could vote) introduced the bill authorizing a constitutional amendment in the House of Representatives. The legislative change requires the support of two-thirds of each chamber, and the bill was passed without an alternative vote.
It was now in the Senate. Historically the most united of the two chambers, the suffrageurs expected it quickly. Carrie Chapman Catt, President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, even bought a new dress for the occasion. Even a deadly new adversary, the The 1918 flu pandemic did not prevent the suffragettes from continuing. Despite the momentum, southern Democrats and conservative Republican senators managed to stop the bill.
The election results finally changed the political terrain. After the war ended, the nation was in the mood for change and the mid-term in November 1918 ceded control of Congress to the Republican Party. At the last minute, a southern Democratic senator tried to amend the bill to limit voting to white women, but it failed. Finally, in June 1919, in one of its first legislative acts, the new Congress voted the bill and the amendment to the vote was submitted to ratification. Catt called the passage of Congress “an electric touch that sets in motion a vast and complicated machine”.
READ MORE: American women have fought for suffrage for 70 years. It took World War I to finally get there
Ratification is the last and most difficult obstacle to amending the constitution. A majority of the legislative assemblies of three quarters of the States must vote for. At least six constitutional amendments, including the Equality Rights Amendment, were adopted by Congress but have not been ratified. The female suffrage amendment had the advantage of having well-organized and dedicated supporters of suffrage in every state, but the anti-suffrage movement was just as energetic.
Ratifications started quickly – in four months, 17 states had acted – but slowly stopped. States like Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota, where women have voted for decades, saw no rush to empower women in the rest of the country. In Washington State, where women have been full voters since 1911, the governor resisted the calling of a special session of the legislature to consider the suffrage bill, but ultimately in March nine months after the Senate passed, it gave in and Washington became the 35th state.
Where would the ratification of the 36th State come from? In Connecticut and Vermont, conservative Republican governors have refused to call their legislatures. All eyes turned to the South, where most of the states were controlled by white supremacist democrats. In July, four months after Washington State had ratified, the prospects for ratification by 36 states were bleak and the suffragettes became desperate.
Finally, Tennessee, a rare southern state with two parties, won the deciding vote. A young Republican legislator voted. Eight days later, the US Secretary of State announced that the The 19th Amendment was officially part of the Constitution.
READ MORE: One American Man Votes to Vote
The suffragists had nine weeks to register the women. Although there is no way of knowing the exact numbers, it is generally accepted that one third of eligible women voted in the 1920 elections (compared to two thirds of men).
The era of female suffrage was over. The era of women advancing through the political process had begun. As one suffragist put it, it was “the dawn of women’s political power in America.”
Ellen DuBois is an Emeritus Research Professor in the Department of History at UCLA and the author of numerous books on the history of female suffrage in the United States, including Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote.
