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Hear Us Roar: Victory, 1918 and Beyond
"Women have suffered agony of soul which you can never comprehend, that you and your daughters might inherit political freedom. That vote has been costly. Prize it!"
-- Carrie Chapman Catt, 1920
Suffragists' ongoing acts of civil disobedience, their extensive and strategic lobbying of Congress and the president, and women's wartime contributions led to Woodrow Wilson's endorsement of the Nineteenth Amendment and its passage in the House of Representatives in January 1918. Securing enough votes in the Senate took until June 1919, at which point attention shifted to the states for a new and exhausting ratification campaign. After Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment and suffragists had secured the required three-fourths majority of the states, the amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution on August 26, 1920. Three months later, in a presidential election year, millions of women across the country could vote for the first time.
The National American Woman Suffrage Association quickly transformed into the League of Women Voters with an emphasis on voter education, citizen participation, and legal, economic, and educational advancement of women, which continues to this day. Simultaneously, the National Woman's Party introduced the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) hoping to secure further rights for women; the ERA cleared the Senate in 1972 but remains unratified. A remarkably hard-fought accomplishment, the Nineteenth Amendment was just the beginning of successive achievements, as waves of women activists drew strength and inspiration from the suffragists who had preceded them and had furthered the nation's democratic ideal of equality for all. |