Wednesday, August 26, 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
When the U.S. Constitution originally allowed states to set voting requirements, many states limited voting rights to white men who owned property – or about 6% of the population. Starting in the mid-1820s, property-ownership qualifications were dropped, allowing most white males to vote. The Fifteenth Amendment extended voting rights to African American men by banning states from denying a person the right to vote based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude" – but still did not protect voting rights based on sex.
The road to women’s suffrage was long and difficult. After Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were barred from entering London’s World Anti-Slavery Convention because they were women, Stanton was motivated to organize the first Women's Rights Convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. At this convention a “declaration of sentiments” was presented and the rights of women were debated, including the right to vote, by suffragists like Stanton and Frederick Douglass. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton went on to become the face of the women’s suffrage movement, but their push for women’s rights stood in direct opposition to the rights of Black Americans.
The suffrage movement continued into the 1900s, but little progress was made until a group of young women decided that new tactics were needed. Alice Paul, a New Jersey native and graduate of Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania, traveled to England to study social work and got to see their suffrage movement firsthand. She joined British suffragettes who were not quietly asking for their rights, but were holding large public parades, organizing picket lines, and making public speeches demanding their right to vote. Paul returned to the United States in 1912 determined to shake up the American suffrage movement.
Paul joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), but soon realized that the conservative women at the helm of the group would not endorse her “radical” methods. In 1916, Paul, Lucy Burns, and several others, including Delaware natives Mabel Vernon and Florence Bayard Hilles (who are better described in our post about Delawareans in the suffrage movement), started the National Woman’s Party (NWP). The group had one aim – to pass a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote. NWP tactics focused on shaming President Woodrow Wilson, who had not publicly endorsed a suffrage amendment. Starting in 1917, the NWP became the first group to ever picket the White House, with banner slogans like, “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?”
These “silent sentinel” protests were met with violence from the public, and eventually the women began being arrested on menial charges such as obstructing traffic and sent to the Occaquan workhouse in Virginia. There, they were forbidden from communicating with family or legal counsel, and they were beaten, stripped, given worm infested food, and forced to wear dirty clothes and sleep on dirty bed linens. On November 17, 1917, 33 women of the NWP who had been imprisoned demanded to be treated as political prisoners which enraged the warden, W. H. Whittaker, and resulted in “the night of terror.” The women endured severe beatings, one woman was knocked unconscious, Lucy Burns was handcuffed to the bars of her cell with her hands over her head all night, and Alice Cosu suffered a heart attack for which she received no medical attention until morning.
To protest their inhumane treatment, Alice Paul and other prisoners began hunger strikes. After a few days, fearing the women would become martyrs for the cause, the warden ordered that they be force-fed eggs and milk using a painful method of snaking a tube through their nostrils or down their throats. Eventually, the press published accounts of the womens’ treatment and two weeks later a judge ordered the women released. The media coverage helped turn the tide of public opinion in favor of the suffragists. The silent sentinel protests continued, and President Wilson finally announced his support for the suffrage amendment in 1918.
On June 4, 1919, the senate approved the Nineteenth Amendment and the battle moved to the states. Constitutional amendments require two-thirds of states to ratify, and the NWP and NAWSA immediately began working to pressure states into voting in favor of the amendment. Delaware had the opportunity to be the last state needed for ratification, but on June 2, 1920 the legislature voted to reject the amendment (24 to 10). Instead, on August 18, 1920, Tennessee had the honor of becoming the 36th state to ratify in a vote of 50 to 49. On August 26, 1920, the U.S. Secretary of State officially signed the Proclamation of the Women's Suffrage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The state of Delaware did not vote to ratify the 19th amendment until March 6, 1923. This year, August 26th marks the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the 19th amendment.
Although the Nineteenth Amendment asserted that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex”, it’s important to recognize that other restrictions – poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and even state-sanctioned intimidation – remained in place to effectively suppress the voting rights of African Americans and other people of color, including women of color. This aspect of the voting rights deserves focused attention, and as such we will review these barriers and their effect in a separate post.
Read More:
Library of Congress - National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection | Digital Collections
Constitution Center Exhibit: THE 19TH AMENDMENT: HOW WOMEN WON THE VOTE
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