What was amendment 19

View in National Archives Catalog. The 19th Amendment guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation. Beginning in the midth century, woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered radical change.

A collection of lesson plans for teachers to engage with the 19th Amendment and Woman Suffrage with their students. When a small group of women gathered in Seneca Falls, NY in , they galvanized a movement for women's suffrage. Suffragists traveled the US by train bringing attention to the fight for voting rights.

Show 10 40 per page. Explore This Park. Women's History. Explore Suffrage Stories and Connections. Suffrage in 60 Seconds. Podcast The Magic Sash. Podcast And Nothing Less.

Podcast The Agitators. Female enfranchisement was still largely opposed by most Americans, and the distraction of the North-South conflict and subsequent Civil War precluded further discussion. During the Reconstruction Era, the 15th Amendment was adopted, granting African American men the right to vote, but the Republican-dominated Congress failed to expand its progressive radicalism into the sphere of gender.

Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was formed to push for an amendment to the U. Another organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Lucy Stone, was organized in the same year to work through the state legislatures. That year, Wyoming became the first state to grant women the right to vote. By the beginning of the 20th century, the role of women in American society was changing drastically; women were working more, receiving a better education, bearing fewer children, and several states had authorized female suffrage.

Eight days later, the 19th Amendment took effect. Despite the passage of the amendment and the decades-long contributions of Black women to achieve suffrage, poll taxes, local laws and other restrictions continued to block women of color from voting.

It would take another 50 years for all women to achieve voting equality. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! The German submarine was the first enemy warship captured on the high seas by the U.

Navy since the War of Combined, these factors contributed to a new way of thinking about what it meant to be a woman and a citizen in the United States. More than people—mostly women, but also some men—attended, including former African-American slave and activist Frederick Douglass. In addition to their belief that women should be afforded better opportunities for education and employment, most of the delegates at the Seneca Falls Convention agreed that American women were autonomous individuals who deserved their own political identities.

What this meant, among other things, was that the delegates believed women should have the right to vote. Following the convention, the idea of voting rights for women was mocked in the press and some delegates withdrew their support for the Declaration of Sentiments. Anthony and other activists. Anthony and the Long Push for Women's Suffrage. With the onset of the Civil War , the suffrage movement lost some momentum, as many women turned their attention to assisting in efforts related to the conflict between the states.

Stanton and some other suffrage leaders objected to the proposed 15th Amendment to the U. Constitution , which would give Black men the right to vote, but failed to extend the same privilege to American women of any skin color. The 15th Amendment was ratified in Despite the divisions between the two organizations, there was a victory for voting rights in when the Wyoming Territory granted all female residents age 21 and older the right to vote.

Congress for a constitutional amendment. Congress responded by forming committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate to study and debate the issue. However, when the proposal finally reached the Senate floor in , it was defeated. Within six years, Colorado , Utah and Idaho adopted amendments to their state constitutions granting women the right to vote.

During debate over the 15th Amendment, white suffragist leaders like Stanton and Anthony had argued fiercely against Black men getting the vote before white women. Such a stance led to a break with their abolitionist allies, like Douglass, and ignored the distinct viewpoints and goals of Black women, led by prominent activists like Sojourner Truth and Frances E. Harper , fighting alongside them for the right to vote. As the fight for voting rights continued, Black women in the suffrage movement continued to experience discrimination from white suffragists who wanted to distance their fight for voting rights from the question of race.

The turn of the 20th century brought renewed momentum to the women's suffrage cause.