Two Voting Rights Constitutional Amendments
Women’s Suffrage
The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed 100 years ago: “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.” Although commonly defined as granting women the right-to-vote, more accurately, the Amendment prevents the government from denying the franchise to women. At the time, women already had the right to vote in many states. But not all of them. Beyond the United States, women fought worldwide for the vote.
Country-by-Country Progress.
In 1893 New Zealand became one of the first countries to grant women the right to vote. Australia followed in 1902. Several countries provided women the vote during or immediately after World War I, including Canada, Poland, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, and the United States. After the overthrow of the Russian Tsar in early 1917, Russian women were granted voting rights. Of course, this became moot when the Communists took power in late 1917, and elections were discontinued. France was a latecomer to women’s rights. France waited until 1944 during World War II when General de Gaulle’s government-in-exile legalized universal suffrage. Italy and Japan allowed women to vote at the end of World War II in 1945. Surprisingly, women were unable to vote in Switzerland until 1971.
State-by-State Advancement in the United States
Although the United States did not adopt universal women’s voting rights until the 19th Amendment, individual states were free to open voting to women, and many did - mostly in the western United States. Several territories allowed women to vote before becoming a state. The territory of Wyoming became one of the first, as it allowed women to vote in 1869, decades before becoming a state in 1890. The U.S. Congress, strongly opposed to women's suffrage, threatened to withhold Statehood from Wyoming. Officials sent back a staunchly worded telegram stating that Wyoming would remain out of the Union 100 years rather than join without women's suffrage. On July 10, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed the bill approving Wyoming as the nation's "Equality State."
The territories of Utah, Washington, Montana, and Alaska also provided women with voting rights before Statehood. By 1920, when the 19th Amendment passed, most states west of the Mississippi river had already granted women’s voting rights. Historians have a variety of explanations. Perhaps the hard work involved in the western pioneer life where women played an essential role played a part. Or the type of person seeking freedom in a newer unsettled part of the country was open to women’s rights. Men tended to outnumber women in these new communities, and perhaps voting rights was an enticement for women to move. It took until 1913 for Illinois became the first state east of the Mississippi to allow women to vote.
Utah had an interesting experience. Women were able to vote starting in 1870. Polygamy was legal at the time. Congress refused to admit Utah to the Union until the Mormon Church renounced polygamy. In 1887 Congress passed the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which banned polygamy and abolished women’s voting rights at the same time. The Mormon Church agreed to discontinue multiple marriages, and the process of applying for Statehood began. In 1896 Utah became the 45th state of the United States. The Utah State Constitution overrode the Edmunds-Tucker Act and Utah became one of the few to allow full voting rights for women.
Suffrage, Abolition, and Temperance
Three movements started in the 1800s. Suffrage, to grant women the right-to-vote; Abolition, to eliminate slavery; and Temperance, to reduce or ban alcohol consumption. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, two leaders in the Suffragette movement, founded a Temperance Society in New York during the 1850s. They felt the government ignored women’s Temperance groups since they lacked political power without the vote. As a result, both left the Temperance group to focus on women’s rights.
Before the Civil War, Suffragettes and Abolitionists shared common cause – Freedom. In July 1848, several hundred people gathered in Seneca Falls, NY, for the first women’s rights convention. Elizabeth Cady Stanton read her “Declaration of Sentiments,” protesting women’s inferior legal status and listing eleven resolutions for women’s equality, including the vote. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who became a famous abolitionist, attended the 1848 meeting and spoke forcefully in support of Stanton’s resolution for women’s suffrage. As he wrote in his abolitionist paper, “…our conviction is that all political rights which it is expedient for men to exercise, it is equally so for women…if government is only just when it governs by the free consent of the governed, there can be no reason…for denying to woman…the elective franchise.”
Shortly after the Civil War ended, and the slaves freed, Blacks and Women’s rights advocates disagreed over voting rights. The 15th Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1870, granted the right to vote to Black men but did not mention women. Susan B. Anthony wanted the amendment to include women stating, “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work for or demand the ballot for the Negro and not for the woman.” Frederick Douglass was concerned that including female suffrage would doom the entire amendment. And that the need was more urgent for the former slaves: “When women…are hunted down…when they are dragged from their houses and hung upon lamp-posts…when they are in danger of having their homes burnt down over their heads…then [women] will have an urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own." In support of their position, some women used biased language. One woman denigrated both immigrants and Blacks, “Think of Patrick and Sambo, and Hans and Yung Tung who do not know the difference between a monarchy and a republic, never read the Declaration of Independence or Webster’s spelling book, making laws for women of education and refinement.”
Despite this split, Frederick Douglass continued to support women’s suffrage to the end-of-his-life. In 1888 he made a speech at an annual meeting of a women’s suffrage association. He continued to support the women’s right to vote. Douglass said that while his cause was ‘freedom for the negro,’ the Suffragettes were a greater cause, “…it comprehends the liberation…of one-half of the whole human family.” He described himself as a “radical woman suffrage man.” In February 1895, Douglass attended a woman’s suffrage meeting with Susan B. Anthony. He died that night, and she gave one of the eulogies.
Two Voting Rights Amendments
It took two amendments to the U.S. Constitution to provide voting rights to all citizens. First, 150 years ago, in 1870, the 15th Amendment to the U.S Constitution was adopted. It granted the vote to Black men, reading, “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 race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Fifty years later, in 1920, the 19th Amendment provided women with voting rights. However, Black women (and men) were unable to exercise those rights due to voter suppression. That took over 40 more years until the passage of the Voting Rights acts in the 1960s.
“I voted” stickers placed on Susan B. Anthony’s grave