Votes for Women
ILLINOIS, 1910s
In 1912, Americans elected a new president. Millions of men flooded to the polls to exercise their right to vote. Women could not. No matter what they knew about the candidates or the issues of the day, women were considered unfit to vote in national elections. They had to follow laws but had no voice in making them.
Voting rights activists, called suffragists, fought to change this. Suffragists attacked claims that women weren’t as strong or as smart as men. They marched, spoke, demonstrated, held conventions, wrote to lawmakers, and even went to jail.
The Long Battle for Suffrage
The women’s suffrage movement began even before the country's founding[HM1.1]. In the decades after the Civil War, women lacked rights, economic security, and formal political power. But they refused to accept this. Suffragists worked to persuade male voters and lawmakers to extend voting rights to women. Voting, they argued, helped mothers protect their children, and being denied the right to vote was discrimination.
But it wasn’t just a battle to change the minds of men. Not every woman thought women should vote. Some believed that women belonged at home, not in the public world of politics. Suffragists argued that without the vote women would remain second-class citizens.
The Many Paths to Suffrage
Women from different backgrounds spoke out against injustices, identified problems, and organized to solve them. Many believed that voting rights would give them a voice in making laws that would improve things such as education, workplaces, and housing. Suffragists sold buttons and pins with their rallying cry—Votes for Women—to raise money for and encourage support of their cause.
Women of all colors participated in the movement. However, they were not unified. White suffragists, who ran many national suffrage organizations, often didn’t consider the needs of women of color, and some held racist views. Black, Native American, Asian American, and Latina women faced racist laws that barred them from voting even as white women made some voting rights gains. Women of color formed their own organizations that advocated for suffrage and other issues affecting their communities.
Victory State by State and Finally, Nationally
In 1913, after decades of speaking out, women won suffrage in Illinois. After the victory, many continued to push for a constitutional amendment to extend the right to all American women. First introduced in 1878 and reintroduced each year after, the Nineteenth Amendment finally passed in 1919, granting all American women the right to vote. Three-fourths of the states ratified it to add it to the US Constitution on August 18, 1920.
For decades, though, race was used to limit many women's access to voting. New leaders would pick up the fight.
