Don't Know Much About the 19th Amendment

DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT ELECTING THE U.... "The Blood and Sweat Behind Labor Day"

Don't Know Much About the 19th Amendment

Ninety-one years ago, on AUGUST 18, 1920, Tennessee ratified the 19th Amendment, giving it the needed number of states to become part of the U.S. Constitution. Finally, all American women could enjoy the basic right of citizenship. It was a victory in a long struggle for "suffrage" fought by the "Suffragists."

Who were the suffragists?

Women in America always endured plenty of suffering. What they lacked was "suffrage" (from the Latin suffragium for "vote"). Many American women as far back as Abigail Adams—who admonished her husband John to "Remember the Ladies" when he went off to declare independence—had pressed for voting rights, but just as consistently had been shut out. Women were fighting against the resistance of church, Constitution, an all-male power structure that held fast to the reins, and many of their own –who believed in a woman's divinely ordained, second-place, "submissive" role.

But at the 19th-century progressed, more women were pressed to work, and they showed the first signs of collective strength. For instance, in the 1860 Lynn, Massachusetts, shoe worker strike, many of the 10,000 workers who marched in protest were women.

Women were also a strong force in the abolitionist movement. But even in a so-called freedom movement, women were accorded second-rate status. To many male abolitionists, the "moral" imperative to free black men and give them the vote carried much greater weight than the somewhat blasphemous notion of equality of the sexes. In fact, it was the exclusion of women from an abolitionist gathering that sparked the first formal organization for women's rights.

The birth of the women's movement in America can be dated to July 19, 1848, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) and Lucretia Mott (1793–1880) called for a women's convention in Seneca Falls, New York, after they had been told to sit in the balcony at a London antislavery meeting.

By the turn of the 20th century, some women began concentrating on winning the vote state by state, a strategy that succeeded in Idaho and Colorado, where grassroots organizations won the vote for women. After 1910, a few more western states relented, and the movement gained new momentum.

At about the same time, American suffragists took a new direction, borrowed from their British counterparts. The British "suffragettes" (as opposed to the commonly used American term "suffragist") had been using far more radical means to win the vote. Led by Emmeline Pankhurst, British suffragettes chained themselves to buildings, invaded Parliament, blew up mailboxes, and burned buildings. Imprisoned for these actions, the women called themselves "political prisoners" and went on hunger strikes that were met with force-feedings. The cruelty of this official response was significant in attracting public sympathy for the suffragette cause.

Alice Paul (1885–1977) a Quaker-raised woman who studied in England and had joined the Pankhurst-led demonstrations in London, helped bring these tactics back to America. At the 1913 inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, who opposed the vote for women, Paul organized a demonstration of 10,000 people, most of them women. Her strategy was to hold the party in power—the Democrats in this case—responsible for denying women the vote. By this time, several million women could vote in various states, and Republicans saw, as they had in winning the black vote in Grant's time, that there might be a political advantage in accepting universal suffrage.

After Wilson's 1916 reelection, in which women in some states had voted against him two to one, the protest was taken to Wilson's doorstep as women began to picket around the clock outside the White House. Later imprisoned, Paul and others imitated the British tactic of hunger strikes. Again, sympathies turned in favor of the women. After their convictions were overturned, the militant suffragists returned to their White House protests.

In 1918, Paul's political tactics paid off as a Republican Congress was elected. Among them was Montana's Jeannette Rankin (1880–1973), the first woman elected to Congress. Rankin's first act was to introduce a constitutional suffrage amendment on the House floor. The amendment was approved by a one-vote margin. It took the Senate another eighteen months to pass it, and in June 1919, the Nineteenth Amendment was submitted to the states for ratification. Now fearful of the women's vote in the approaching presidential election, Wilson shifted to support of the measure.

One year later, on August 18, 1920, Tennessee delivered the last needed vote, and on August 26, the Secretary of State certified the ratification. The Nineteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution. It stated simply –