Women Vote! PDF 19th Amendment

# Women Win the Vote! ## 19 for the 19th Amendment **Nancy B. Kennedy** Illustrated by Katy Dockrill **Norton Young Readers** An Imprint of W.W. Norton & Company Independent Publishers Since 1923 ## Contents **Introduction: Where Did Women's Right to Vote Come From?** 1. Lucretia Coffin Mo...

# Women Win the Vote! ## 19 for the 19th Amendment **Nancy B. Kennedy** Illustrated by Katy Dockrill **Norton Young Readers** An Imprint of W.W. Norton & Company Independent Publishers Since 1923 ## Contents **Introduction: Where Did Women's Right to Vote Come From?** 1. Lucretia Coffin Mott - January 3, 1793-November 11, 1880 2. Sojourner Truth - c. 1797-November 26, 1883 3. Abby Kelley Foster - January 15, 1811-January 14, 1887 4. Elizabeth Cady Stanton - November 12, 1815-October 26, 1902 5. Lucy Stone - August 13, 1818-October 18, 1893 6. Julia Ward Howe - May 27, 1819-October 17, 1910 7. Susan B. Anthony - February 15, 1820-March 13, 1906 8. Isabella Beecher Hooker - February 22, 1822-January 25, 1907 9. Mary Ann Shadd Cary - October 9, 1823-June 5, 1893 10. Matilda Joslyn Gage - March 24, 1826-March 18, 1898 11. Frances Willard - September 28, 1839-February 17, 1898 12. Anna Howard Shaw - February 14, 1847-July 2, 1919 13. Carrie Chapman Catt - January 9, 1859-March 9, 1947 14. Ida B. Wells-Barnett - July 16, 1862-March 25, 1931 15. Mary Church Terrell - September 23, 1863- July 24, 1954 16. Lucy Burns - July 28, 1879-December 22, 1966 17. Jeannette Rankin - June 11, 1880-May 18, 1973 18. Adelina Otero-Warren - October 23, 1881-January 23, 1965 19. Alice Paul - January 11, 1885-July 9, 1977 20. **And Don't Forget** - 91 * Parker Pillsbury - September 22, 1809-July 7, 1898 * Frederick Douglass - c. February 1818-February 20, 1895 * Amelia Jenks Bloomer - May 27, 1818-December 30, 1894 * Victoria Woodhull - September 23, 1838-June 9, 1927 * Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin - August 31, 1842-March 13, 1924 * Nina Evans Allender - December 25, 1873-April 2, 1957 * Inez Milholland Boissevain - August 6, 1886-November 25, 1916 * Nell Richardson - 1890-? and Alice Snitjer Burke - May 12, 1875-February 11, 1948 * Harry T. Burn - November 12, 1895-February 19, 1977 * Charlotte Woodward Pierce - 18292-1921 *Epilogue: A Battle Until the End* *Woman Suffrage Timeline* *The Banners They Carried* *Places to Visit* *Notes* *Sources* *Photo Credits* *Index* ## Introduction: Where Did Women's Right to Vote Come From? The right to vote - we hardly give it a thought these days. Once we've turned eighteen we can register as voters and then on Election Day we head to our local polling place to cast our ballot. We elect school board members, sheriffs, lawmakers, presidents, sometimes even judges. This right is known as suffrage. This simple act of citizenship hasn't always been the right of all Americans. Far from it, for most of our nations history, only men - and only white men, at that - could vote. The Constitution of the United States, the document that became our country's governing law in 1789, spoke of "persons" and not "men". But in practice, and later through laws and court rulings women were excluded. Most men - and some women - believed women just didn't have what it takes to vote. At first, only free white men over the age of twenty-one who were educated and owned property could vote in our country. These limits left out a huge swath of people - in the first presidential election held in 1789, only 6 percent of the population had the right to vote. This division between who could and could not vote became unbearable for those who were denied the franchise. Eventually women decided they had enough and began to push back. Local groups started gathering, and in 1848, the first large-scale gathering devoted to women's rights in the United States took place in Seneca Falls, New York. These fearless females got the ball rolling! Our form of democracy allows the Constitution to be changed, or amended. After the Seneca Falls Convention, women began to fight for an amendment that would grant them the right to vote. Their single-minded purpose earned them the title of suffragist. They traveled across the country speaking to puzzled audiences who had never heard women speak in public. They lobbied lawmakers who had never faced women determined to have their way. Finally, in 1878, suffragists succeeded in having their amendment introduced in Congress. But congressmen weren't interested. They were afraid women would vote for people and issues they didn't agree with. Year after year, the amendment was introduced but it wasn't acted on until 1887, when the Senate voted on and defeated the amendment. Despite the setback, suffragists continued to have the amendment introduced every year. As the years passed, the suffrage campaign lost steam. During the Civil War - and later World War I - the nation's attention was focused on the war effort. Suffrage groups split over the issue of voting rites for African Americans. Some women worked to gain the vote state by state, while others insisted an amendment to the Constitution was the only solution. Suffragists became divided even by tactics - some lost patience with polite lobbying and became militant. If they landed in jail? So much the better! Anything to bring attention to the cause. When the amendment reached Congress in 1919, forty-one years after the suffragists first attempt, lawmakers were finally listening, and this time it passed. But in order to become law, it needed the approval of thirty-six states. Suffragists began an intense state-by-state battle. Their hard work paid off - on August 18, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. Now it was illegal for states or the federal government to deny citizens the right to vote because of their gender. In the presidential election that year, an estimated 10 million women voted for the first time. In this book, you'll meet nineteen women who paved the way for the vote. Among them are Lucretia Mott, a Quaker who became the mother of the women's rights movement, and Sojourner Truth, a former slave who knew the plight of the oppressed all too well. You'll meet Susan B. Anthony, who was jailed for voting, and Abby Kelley Foster, who refused to pay taxes to an all-male government. Also leading the campaign were Ida B. Wells-Barnett, an African American journalist who refused to walk in a segregated section of a suffrage march; Adelina Otero-Warren, an Hispano woman who led the suffrage fight in New Mexico; and Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress. Millions devoted their lives to this fight - they marched they protested, they held conventions and gave speeches, they lobbied, wrote articles, and drew cartoons. They were bullied and mocked as man-haters, monsters, and traitors to their sex. They became outcasts in their homes and in their communities. For their actions, they were thrown into filthy, freezing prison cells, where they were beaten and shackled to their cell doors and fed worm-ridden slop. They went on hunger strikes and were held down while prison doctors thrust feeding tubes down their throats. Their resolve was tested daily. One hundred years ago, women won a hard-fought civil rights victory. For 144 years, our country denied women the vote - seventy-two years passed from our nation's founding in 1776 until the first stirrings of the suffrage movement in Seneca Falls. For another seventy-two years, women fought valiantly. Theirs was a cause that cost many women their reputations, their families and friends, their health, and, for some, even their lives. It's something to consider while you stand in line at the polls with your parents - and when eventually you cast your own vote.