The 19th Amendment | A New Chapter in American History

On August 18, 1920, the United States took a historic step toward a more representative democracy.

With Tennessee's ratification of the 19th Amendment, the required three-fourths of the states had approved a constitutional amendment declaring that the right of American citizens to vote could not be denied or abridged on account of sex. On August 26, the amendment was formally certified and became part of the United States Constitution.

After generations of organizing, petitioning, marching, writing and persevering, American women had achieved a remarkable victory.

Why Women Had Not Been Allowed to Vote

To understand the significance of the 19th Amendment, it helps to understand why women had originally been excluded from voting.

The early American political system was built around a very different understanding of citizenship and representation than we have today. Voting was generally associated with being an independent member of society, and political participation was largely limited to men who met property or other requirements.

Women, particularly married women, were generally viewed as belonging to the domestic sphere, while men were considered the representatives of their households in public and political life.  Under the legal doctrine of coverture, a married woman's legal identity and economic independence were also substantially limited.

Coverture is an old English common-law rule that said that when a woman marries, the husband and wife become one legal person. The husband was considered the household representative in legal matters. This thinking was brought to America by the early English settlers and found its way into the initial language of the Constitution. This is really more a picture of the culture of the time than a belief that women's voices and opinions didn't matter. Rather, society considered women's roles in the home and men's roles in public life to be fundamentally different.

That system gradually changed as America's understanding of citizenship, individual rights and representation evolved. In fact, some women could vote in certain early circumstances. New Jersey, for example, permitted some property-owning women to vote until the state restricted voting to white men in 1807.

The 19th Amendment would ultimately mark a fundamental change in that understanding. Women would no longer be excluded from voting simply because they were women.

A Long Road to the Ballot

The movement for women's suffrage did not begin in 1920.

Women had been advocating for the right to participate fully in American civic life for generations. At the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, women's suffrage was among the resolutions adopted by those gathered. Over the decades that followed, countless women, and the men who supported them, worked to build public support for women's voting rights.

The movement took many forms. Suffragists organized conventions, circulated petitions, published newspapers, traveled across the country giving speeches, marched in demonstrations, and lobbied lawmakers. Some endured arrest, imprisonment and public opposition.

Black women and other women of color were also active participants in the broader struggle for voting rights, even as they sometimes faced discrimination within the suffrage movement itself. Their contributions are an important part of this history.

What the 19th Amendment Changed

The language of the 19th Amendment is remarkably direct:

“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.”

With those words, the Constitution established that being a woman could no longer be used as a legal basis for denying an American citizen the right to vote.

That was an extraordinary change.

For generations, the political system had largely excluded women from participating through the ballot box. The 19th Amendment permanently changed the Constitution's recognition of women's place in the American electoral process.

The Story Continued

Ratification of the 19th Amendment did not eliminate every barrier that stood between citizens and the ballot.

Many women of color continued to encounter discriminatory laws and practices that made voting difficult or impossible. African American women in particular faced poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation, violence, discriminatory registration practices, and other obstacles, especially in Southern states.

Other women faced different circumstances.

Many Native American women were not U.S. citizens in 1920. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 granted U.S. citizenship to Native Americans born in the United States, although some states continued to impose barriers to Native American voting afterward.

Asian immigrant women also faced citizenship restrictions that affected their ability to vote. Racial restrictions on naturalization were not fully removed until the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952.

Women in Puerto Rico followed yet another path. Puerto Rican women gained voting rights in stages, beginning with literate women in 1929 and expanding to all adult women in 1935 for local elections.

These stories don't diminish the significance of the 19th Amendment. Instead, they remind us that the history of American voting rights is a story of continuing progress.

Another Historic Milestone

One of the most significant chapters in that continuing story came in 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

The 19th Amendment had established that voting rights could not be denied on account of sex. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided powerful federal protections against racial discrimination in voting and helped remove barriers that had prevented many Americans, including women of color, from fully exercising rights already protected by the Constitution.

Together, these milestones reflect something important about the American constitutional system: sometimes the work of securing a principle happens in stages.

Celebrating the 19th Amendment

August 18, 1920, deserves to be remembered and celebrated.

The 19th Amendment represented generations of determination and sacrifice. It opened a new chapter in American history and permanently changed the relationship between women and the nation's political process.

It also stands as a reminder of something larger.

The Constitution is not simply a document that describes the America of one particular moment in history. Through amendments, it can grow and change as the nation works toward the ideals set forth in its founding principles.

The 19th Amendment expanded the promise of American self-government by making it clear that sex could not be used as a reason to deny a citizen the right to vote.

That was a monumental achievement.

And it is worth remembering the women, and the men who stood alongside them, whose persistence helped make that achievement possible.

Today, women not only vote, but hold elected offices at every level of government - city, county, state and federal. August 18, 1920, was more than a date in a history book. It was a milestone in the continuing story of American freedom, citizenship and representative government.