How Did the Battle for the 19th Amendment Work?

Originally, the only Americans granted the right to vote were white male landowners. Learn how white women gained suffrage in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/19th-amendment.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,
Hey brain Stuff, Lauren bob obam here. Sometimes it feels
like the United States as a society has made major
strides in the ongoing fight for gender equality, and sometimes
reality rears its ugly head and you realize, well, the
country still has a long way to go. And the

(00:23):
truth is women continue to fight every day for equal rights.
And it wasn't that long ago that the female portion
of the population, which is roughly half of the United States,
was prohibited from participating in politics until the Nineteenth Amendment
changed that passed by Congress on June four of nineteen
nineteen and ratified on August eighteenth of nineteen twenty, the

(00:43):
Nineteenth Amendment finally acknowledged women's right to vote in America.
For the article of this episode is based on How
Stuff Works. Spoke with Alison ka Lang, PhD, Assistant Professor
of history at Boston's Wentworth Institute of Technology, an author
of picturing political power images in the women's suffrage movement.
She said the nineteenth Amendment prevented states from limiting the

(01:06):
right to vote based on sex. Women started voting in
Wyoming in eighteen sixty nine, and won the vote in
other states in later years, They could also often vote
in local city elections or school board elections before the
Nineteenth Amendment. Even so, the nineteenth Amendment was revolutionary because
it enfranchised more people than any other law in US history.

(01:29):
Well before the Civil War broke out, many women were
beginning to push back against the idea that their role
was confined to managing the husband's home and family. Women
were playing leading roles in reform groups, religious movements, and
anti slavery organizations. All of these actions helped redefine what
it meant to be a woman in the eighteen hundreds
in America, but the first real proposal for the idea

(01:54):
of women's suffrage as a goal, a suffrage meaning the
right to vote, began at the Seneca Falls Convention, which
was the first women's right convention in the United States.
It was held in July eighteen forty eight in Seneca Falls,
New York. More than three hundred people, both men and women, attended,
including slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglas and leading women's right advocate

(02:14):
Elizabeth Katie Stanton, one of the meeting organizers. She kicked
off the event with a rousing speech. She said, we
are assembled to protest against a form of government existing
without the consent of the governed, to declare our right
to be free, as man is free, to be represented
in the government which we are taxed to support, to

(02:35):
have such disgraceful laws as give man the power to
chastise and imprison his wife, to take the wages which
she earns, the property which she inherits, and, in the
case of separation, the children of her love. The delegates
of the convention wrote a declaration of Sentiments modeled on
the u S Declaration of Independence, right down to this

(02:55):
line in the preamble, we hold these truths to be
self evident, that all men and women are created equal.
It included a list of eleven resolutions, the ninth encouraging
women quote to secure themselves their sacred right to the
elective franchise, that is, their right to vote. It was
by far the most controversial, even prompting many women's right

(03:17):
supporters to pull their support, and it barely passed, but
it also became the foundation of the women's suffrage movement
going forward. In the years following, women of all ages
began writing about, marching for and practicing civil disbedience, sometimes
referring to the Declaration of Sentiments in an effort to
change the Constitution, which originally permitted only landowning white men

(03:41):
aged twenty one and older to vote. Lang said suffrage
was a popular term in the nineteenth century, and it
means the right to vote. Americans discussed male suffrage, female suffrage,
black suffrage, etcetera. Today, people often associate the term with
the women's voting rights movement. The Nineteenth Amendment was first

(04:03):
introduced in Congress in eighteen seventy eight, but it took
more than forty years of organizing, petitioning, picketing, and more
to finally get ratified. Over the decades, different strategies were
employed to try to get the amendment passed, and some
attempted to get suffrage acts passed in each individual state.
The tactic worked to an extent. By nineteen twelve, nine

(04:25):
western states had adopted women suffrage. Other advocates went to
court to challenge male only voting laws, and some suffragusts
organized and participated in parades, hunger strikes, and silent visuals.
Regardless of the type of action these supporters took, these
women almost invariably encountered countless forms of verbal and even

(04:45):
physical abuse. By nineteen sixteen, almost all the major suffrage
organizations formed a united front to pass a constitutional amendment.
New York officially adopted women suffrage in nineteen seventeen, and
a year later, President Woodrow Wilson changed his original position
on the matter and declared support for the amendment. Finally,

(05:07):
on May twenty one, nineteen nineteen, the House of Representatives
passed the amendment, and the Senate followed two weeks later.
In nineteen twenty Tennessee became the thirty sixth state to
ratify the amendment, and with three fourths of the states
in agreement, the US was finally able to officially adopt
the new policy. The nineteenth Amendment states the rights of

(05:29):
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. But as impactful as the
Nineteenth Amendment was, it didn't end the struggle. Lang said
it's important to keep in mind that the Nineteenth Amendment
did not grant all women the right to vote. Many

(05:50):
poorer women and women of color were still subject to
poll taxes. Literacy tests and other restrictive laws. American women
gained greater access to the pole through other laws like
the Indian Citizenship Act of nineteen, the repeal of the
Chinese Exclusion Act in ninety three, and the Voting Rights
Act of nineteen. Puerto Rico granted women the vote in

(06:12):
nine so the Nineteenth Amendment opened up opportunities, but many
women still had to fight for the vote. Today's episode
is based on the article the Battle for the Nineteenth
Amendment and Women's right to Vote on how stuffworks dot Com,
written by Michell Konstantinovski. Brain Stuff is production of by

(06:33):
Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com,
and it's produced by Tyler Clay. Four more podcasts. My
heart Radio was at the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.