1. Women’s Suffrage Movement

2. When the United States Constitution was written, only white men had the right to vote. Women were not allowed to vote under the law. Women also did not have many other rights such as the right to own property or to be educated for certain jobs.

3. As time passed, many people came to feel that this was unfair and that women should have the same rights as men in our country.
Women’s suffrage (right to vote) became an organized movement in 1848 at a convention in New York.

4. Women’s Suffrage Parade in New York City

5. The suffrage movement did not have much success in the beginning and it would be almost 80 years before U.S. laws would be changed. Many women and men worked very hard to bring about these much needed changes in the law.
Here are a few important people from the suffrage movement:

6. Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony was born February 15, in Adams, Massachusetts. She was brought up in a Quaker family with long activist traditions. Early in her life she developed a sense of justice.

7. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
In 1851 Stanton met Susan B. Anthony and for the next fifty years they worked together. Stanton wrote and gave speeches that called for the improvement of the legal and traditional rights of women, and Anthony organized and campaigned to achieve these goals.

8. Lucretia Mott
Lucretia Mott helped to organize and call together the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York in July of 1848.

9. Sojourner Truth
Truth became a speaker on women's rights issues after attending a Women's Rights Convention in 1850.

10. Anna Howard Shaw
Anna Shaw was a doctor as well as the first woman Methodist Minister. She met Susan B. Anthony in 1888 and began working for women’s rights. She was the president of the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA) for 11 years.

11. Carrie Chapman Catt
Catt was president of the NAWSA when the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote was passed in 1920.

12. Esther Morris
Esther Morris was the first woman to hold public office in the United States. She was a judge in the Wyoming Territory.

13. These women and other men and women across the country worked long and hard to convince the government and the people of the United States that the laws should be changed.

14. After 1890, increasing competition among political parties made women’s suffrage a hot political issue.

15. Between 1900 and 1920, the woman suffrage movement modernized, adopting new tactics of lobbying, advertising, and grass-roots organizing under the leadership of Carrie Chapman Catt.
Carrie Lane Chapman Catt ( ), women's suffrage leader

16. 1913: Illinois became the first state east of the Mississippi to grant women the vote.

17. Growing opposition fostered a sense of impatience among women who had waited over 50 years since the Seneca Falls Convention for the vote.

18. Alice Paul and Lucy Burns gave a new direction to the women’s rights movement.
In 1913, Paul and Burns organized the National Woman’s Party (NWP), adopted the radical tactics of the British suffragettes, and campaigned for the first Equal Rights Amendment.
Alice Paul ( ), women's suffrage leader

19. The Woman’s Party was one of the first groups in the United States to employ the techniques of classic non-violent protest.

20. The actions of the NWP made the NAWSA seem moderate and reasonable by comparison.

21. In 1916, neither party endorsed woman suffrage in its platform, but both parties called on the states to give women the vote.

22. Jan. 10, 1917: The NWP began to picket the White House.

23. "The Stomach Tube"
"The sensation is most painful," reported a victim in "The drums of the ears seem to be bursting and there is a horrible pain in the throat and breast. The tube is pushed down twenty inches; [it] must go below the breastbone." The prisoners were generally fed a solution of milk and eggs.

24. World War I interrupted the campaign for woman suffrage.

25. Women’s war work allowed them to claim the right of patriotic citizenship.

26. In 1918, in the midst of the war, the House of Representatives passed the federal suffrage amendment, but the Senate voted it down.
Carrie Chapman Catt and President Wilson

27. One thing that had to be done, was to let the people of each state vote on the idea.

28. Finally, on Aug. 20, 1920, the 19th Amendment became part of the United States Constitution when Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify it.

29. The state of Tennessee was the 36th state to approve the law
The state of Tennessee was the 36th state to approve the law. Their approval gave the amendment the majority it needed to become a law.
Finally after years of hard work, the 19th Amendment was added to the Constitution of the United States in August of 1920.

30. (but really just the beginning)
Amendment XIX
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.
The End
(but really just the beginning)