Women's Suffrage Movement

• Women had to fight for the right to vote until the very end, even after universal suffrage became law.
• Suffragists did not see a constitutional amendment taken seriously until well into the 1900s.
• Woodrow Wilson became president in 1913.
• Wilson paid little attention to suffragists picketing the White House during his second term and would duck his head to avoid looking at the protesters.
• Wilson was slow to back a federal suffrage amendment because he was afraid he would lose the support of the Democratic party.
• His attention was also focused on the looming world war.
• In 1916, at Carrie Chapman Catt's emergency suffrage convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Wilson told women they would triumph eventually.
• Anna Howard Shaw retorted to Wilson's statement that women could wait, saying that they had waited long enough.
• In 1918, President Wilson came out in favor of woman suffrage, due to the suffrage victory in New York State.
• Wilson presented suffrage as a war measure to protect the amendment from legal challenges.
• Wilson stated it was his duty to win the war and asked Congress to remove every obstacle in the way.
• In 1918, the amendment was considered for the fortieth time, passed in the House, but was defeated in the Senate by two votes.
• In February 1919, the amendment came up again in Congress.
• Southern senators resisted and belittled suffragists as a "petticoat brigade".
• They wanted individual states to decide who could vote to continue excluding women and African Americans.
• The House passed the amendment again, but it lost in the Senate by one vote.
• On May 19, 1919, the amendment came up for a vote during a special session of the Sixty-Sixth Congress.
• The House passed it by a large majority.
• On June 4, the vote was taken in the Senate, and this time it passed with a vote of 56-25in favor
• Suffragists needed three-fourths of the states to ratify the amendment.
• In 1919, there were forty-eight states, so thirty-six of them had to sign on for approval.
• By March 1920, thirty-five states had given their approval.
• Suffragists converged on Nashville, Tennessee, for the next vote.
• Lobbying in the state capital was intense due to the southern states' stubborn resistance.
• The State Senate passed the amendment easily by a vote of 25-4.
• In the House, on August 17, the debate raged for hours.
• On August 18, two votes to table the amendment failed in a 48-48 tie.
• Harry T. Burn changed his vote to "aye" at his mother's urging for a 49-47 win
• Walker changed his vote to aye, making it 50 for and 46 against, as a tactic to allow for another vote to be taken.
• On August 20, the original vote held despite stalling tactics.
• Anti-suffragists got an order preventing the governor from certifying the vote.
• On August 24, 1920, the governor signed the papers into law.
• On August 26, a train carrying the Tennessee ratification certificate reached Washington, DC, where Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed the amendment.
• Anti-suffragists in Tennessee took their fight to higher courts.
• In 1922, the U.S. Supreme Court shut them down.
• Women and African American men continued to be harassed and turned away from the polls in the South with the illegal use of fees, literacy tests, and land or income requirements.
• Native Americans had to wait until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 to vote, and faced discrimination at the polls.
• Chinese Americans became voting citizens in 1943.
• People of Asian Indian ancestry gained the vote three years later.
• In 1951, Japanese Americans joined the national citizenry.
• In 1961, the Twenty-third Amendment granted residents of Washington, DC, the vote.
• The Voting Rights Act of 1965 made discrimination against any eligible voter illegal.
• In 1971, the Twenty-sixth Amendment lowered the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen

Summary of Facts:

• In 1848, a group of five women met in a New York town.
• 27 million women could vote legally seventy-two years later.
• Today, more than 168 million American women are eligible to vote at age eighteen.
• Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world."

This section explores the struggle women faced to gain the right to vote, even after universal suffrage became law. It highlights Woodrow Wilson's initial reluctance to support a federal suffrage amendment, influenced by political concerns and the looming World War. Key figures like Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Howard Shaw are mentioned.