A Brief History of Women's Right to Vote +

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Pre-1700s

Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, women served as an early inspiration for women’s equality. Later, Lucretia Mott, one of the drafters of Seneca Falls’ 1848 “Declaration of Sentiments,” spent the summer leading up to the convention with the Seneca Nation, witnessing their matriarchal social organization, where women nominated and removed chiefs and took other leadership roles in tribal politics and decisions.

1776

Only people who are recognized as owning land can vote.

1787

No national standard exists for voting rights, so states are given the power to regulate their own voting laws. In most cases, voting remains in the hands of white male landowners.

1790

The 1790 Naturalization Law is passed and states that only “free white” immigrants can become naturalized citizens who vote.

1819-1820

Free Black women Jarena Lee and Maria Stewart become ministers after challenging the church on a woman’s right to preach. Stewart is one of the first known women to speak to a mixed audience of men and women, Black and white. She lectures publicly on women’s rights and anti-slavery.

1828

The last state (Maryland) passes legislation removing religious restrictions. White men can no longer be denied the right to vote based on their religion, but women and non-whites are still barred from voting.

1840

June

After being barred from an anti-slavery convention in London because of their gender, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton make plans to hold a Women’s Convention in the US to “form a society to advocate the rights of women.”

1848

July 19-20

Elizabeth Cady Stantion and Lucretia Mott hold a women’s rights convention in Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York. While Frederick Douglass attends, Black women are absent. 68 women and 32 men sign the Declaration of Sentiments, which includes voting rights for women.

1850

Oct 23-24

The first National Women’s Rights Convention is held in Worcester, Massachusetts. Almost 1,000 men and women from eleven states, including California, attend.

1851

May 29

Sojourner Truth, a former slave, abolitionist and women’s rights activist, gives her “Ain’t I A Woman” speech at a Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio. A popular, but inaccurate transcript of her speech is later published by white abolitionist, Frances Dana Barker Gage, who believed her version (which depicts Truth with a stereotypical Southern slave accent) would be more palatable to the American public.

1854

Margaretta Forten and Harriet Forten Purvis, daughters of Black abolitionists James and Charlotte Forten, help organize the fifth National Women’s Rights Convention in 1854. While Black women may have attended the early women’s rights conventions, meeting notes typically did not record their presence.

1857

March

March: In Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court rules that the US Constitution is not intended to include Black people as citizens. This decision is later overturned by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the US Constitution.

1866

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony form the American Equal Rights Association, an organization for white and Black women and men committed to universal suffrage.

1866

Harriet Forten Purvis, a Black abolitionist and suffragist, helps organize the Philadelphia Suffrage Association.

1866

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper joins the movement for suffrage while attending the Women’s Convention of 1866. Born into slavery, Harper became active on the Underground Railroad and also rose to national prominence as a poet. Following the Women’s Convention, Harper would go on to serve in leadership roles in the Colored Section of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the National Association of Colored Women 

1867

Kansas Senator S.C. Pomeroy introduces a federal women’s suffrage amendment in Congress, which is ultimately rejected.

1868

In California, Laura de Force Gordon and Anna Dickinson give a series of lectures advocating for women’s suffrage.

1868

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified. It grants citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States”, but it only applies to men who are at least 21 years old.

1869

In San Francisco, Emily Pitt and Elizabeth T. Schenck organize the first suffrage meeting on the West Coast. As far back as the 1890s, Black women in California campaign for suffrage.

1869

May

May: The American Equal Rights Association (AERA) divides following its annual meeting due to ideological conflicts between key members. Frederick Douglass advocates that white women are already indirectly empowered by their husbands, brothers and sons, and therefore, Black men must attain the right to vote first and that Black women will also be empowered and enfranchised after Black men.

1869

Following the split of the AERA, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who staunchly oppose giving Black men the right to vote before women, form the all-female National Woman Suffrage Association to prioritize (white) women’s right to vote. Later that year, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and others form the American Woman Suffrage Association, which is open to men and women but focused exclusively on advocating for women’s suffrage via a state-by-state campaign.

1870

Feb 3

The 15th Amendment passes and prohibits disenfranchisement on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

1870

Laura de Force Gordon establishes the California Woman Suffrage Society.

1874

In Minor v. Happersett, the Supreme Court rules that the 14th Amendment does not guarantee women the right to vote. The Court decides that citizenship does not allow women the right to vote and that each state dictates its female citizens’ voting rights.

1876

July 4

White women suffragists crash the Centennial Celebration in Independence Hall and present the ceremony representative with the “Declaration of the Rights of Women” written by Matilda Joslyn Gage.

1877

California Senator A.A. Sargeant introduces the Woman Suffrage Amendment into Congress. The language in the document eventually becomes the 19th Amendment.

1878-1879

At the second California Constitutional Convention, California suffragists distribute petitions – proposing Amendment 39 – to remove the words “white male” from the California constitution, although this effort is ultimately unsuccessful. This section is eventually changed to “native male citizen.”

1881

Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Ida Husted Harper and Elizabeth Cady Stanton publish the first volume of The History of Woman Suffrage, but it excludes women of color, which ultimately becomes the basis for the popular history of the movement.

1887

Jan 25

The U.S. Senate votes on women’s suffrage for the first time. The bill is defeated.

1890

The National Women Suffrage Association and the American Women Suffrage Association merge to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. NAWSA follows the American Women Suffrage Association’s initial strategy and conducts state-by-state campaigns to obtain voting rights for women. Despite the predominantly white audience in the major suffrage organizations and racist rhetoric used by many white women suffragists, Black women become members of both groups.

1890

Both Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s continue using racist and classist rhetoric. Anthony refuses to have NAWSA publicly support an end to racial segregation because of her fear that white women in the South might withdraw from the movement. And Stanton argues that women voters of “wealth, education, and refinement” are needed to offset the effect of former slaves and immigrants whose “pauperism, ignorance, and degradation” might negatively impact the American political system.

1890

The Indian Naturalization Act grants citizenship to Native Americans but only those whose applications are approved – similar to the process of being naturalized.

1893

Ida B. Wells founds the Women’s Era Club in Chicago, a civic club for Black women to advocate for equality and community improvement in Chicago. Wells would dedicate decades of her life to advocacy around civil and women’s rights, boldly calling out white-led suffrage organizations for discriminationatory and racist practices.

1893

The California Legislature passes a bill extending suffrage to women but only for school elections. The bill is later vetoed by Governor Henry Markham.

1895

Suffrage advocates in California organize a statewide campaign to pass Assembly Constitutional Amendment 11, which would grant women suffrage in the state. Black suffragist Naomi Anderson travels throughout the state campaigning for women’s right to vote.

1896

July

Black suffragists merge two major organizations (the National Federation of Afro-American Women and the National League of Colored Women) to create the National Association of Colored Women, which focuses on civil rights issues, such as women’s suffrage and Jim Crow laws. Mary Church Terrell, the daughter of former slaves, is elected president.

1896

Nov

Californians vote against the proposed Assembly Constitutional Amendment 11 – which would have granted women voting rights – with just over 55% voting against it. The politics of Prohibition came into play, with Amendment opponents stoking fear that women would vote against the sale of alcohol.

1898

Mary Church Terrell, president of the National Association of Colored Women, addresses the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association at a meeting celebrating the organization’s 15th anniversary in Washington D.C. In her speech, she describes the specific challenges facing Black or women of color women and argues that education and religious faith are safeguards against discrimination.

1911

Californian suffragists find an ally in Republican State Senator Charles W. Bell who agrees to sponsor Senate Constitutional Amendment No. 8 (Proposition 4) which would grant women the right to vote in California state elections for the first time. They have just 8 months to campaign.

1911

Some suffragist organizations, such as the Political Equality League, seek to include Spanish-speaking Californians to support the Amendment. Maria de Lopez, President of the College Equal Suffrage League and a Los Angeles high school teacher, furthers this endeavor by translating flyers into Spanish in the Los Angeles region. Tens of thousands of Spanish-language pamphlets are distributed across Southern California in 1911 as part of this campaign. In addition to heading the College Equal Suffrage League, Lopez was also a member of the Los Angeles Votes for Women Club and successfully campaigned for suffrage. She believed that the support of Latinx voters was essential and imperative for inclusivity.  Lopez is noted as the first person in the U.S. to make a speech about women’s suffrage in Spanish.

1911

Oct 10

California becomes the sixth state to grant women the right to vote. The initiative passes with just 3,587 votes – the equivalent of a single vote in each precinct. Proposition 4 reenergizes voters and spurs renewed ratification efforts across the country.

1912

May 19

Tye Leung Schulze becomes the first Chinese-American woman in history to “exercise the electoral franchise,” according to the San Francisco Call.

1912

After joining a conversation between state and national suffrage leaders and other representatives of New York City’s Chinese-American community, a 16-year-old Mabel Ping-Hua Lee leads a contingent at that year’s suffrage parade, on horseback. She continues to advocate for suffrage alongside racial equality throughout her career and is frequently published on those topics, including in the New York Times.

1913

Ida B. Wells and Belle Squire found the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago to advance voting rights for all women and promote Black leadership in the wake of Illinois’ Presidential and Municipal Suffrage Bill, which gave women in the state the right to vote for presidential electors, mayor, aldermen and most other local offices. In partnership with the Negro Fellowship League, the Club succeeds in electing Chicago’s first Black Alderman and forms the Federated Organizations. At the National American Woman Suffrage Association parade in D.C. that year, Wells defies the march organizers’ directive to march separately in a “colored” delegation,” instead linking arms with Squire and another white partner Virginia Brooks in the main contingent.

1913

The first-ever Women’s Suffrage Parade takes place with between 5,000-10,000 participants. The event is organized by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns for NAWSA.

1916

Jeannette Rankin of Montana is the first woman elected to the House of Representatives. As a white woman, she joins four years before women’s suffrage is granted across the country.

1917-1925

Mary McLeod Bethune serves as Florida chapter president of the National Association of Colored Women, working to register Black voters in the face of terrorism and personal threats from the Ku Klux Klan. Bethune went on to become national NACW President and founding president of the National Council of Negro Women. Her leadership helped transition Black voters from the Republican party to the Democratic party during the Great Depression, and she served in a leadership role in the FDR administration.

1919

June 4

The US passes the 19th Amendment, and sends it to the states for ratification.

1920

Aug 18

The 19th Amendment is ratified federally and grants women the right to vote but does not guarantee the right to non-white women (including Native American or Asian Pacific Islander women).

1920

Aug 26

The 19th Amendment is officially certified by the Secretary of State and goes into effect. The success of women’s suffrage with passage of the 19th Amendment was the single largest extension of voting rights in American history, at the time. The campaign lasted nearly 70 years with multiple generations of women whose persistent activism laid the foundation for the increasing level of equality women in our country experience today.

In 1973, at the behest of Rep. Bella Abzug (D-NY), the US Congress designates August 26 as Women’s Equality Day.

1921

The U.S. Supreme Court clarifies that constitutional rights – and as such, women’s suffrage – do not extend to residents of either Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands.

1922

The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Ozawa v. United States that people of Japanese descent are ineligible to become naturalized citizens. The following year, the Court finds that “Asian Indians” are also not eligible to become citizens.

1922

Sept 22

The Cable Act goes into effect and provides a path back to citizenship (and the voting booth) for women who lost their US citizenship by marrying a foreign national after the passage of the Expatriation Act of 1907. While the Act reverses this in general, American women who marry “aliens ineligible for citizenship” (i.e. immigrant men from Asian countries) continue to lose their own citizenship until 1936.

1924

June 24

Native American suffragists including activist Zitkala-Sa of the Yankton Sioux tribe succeed in pushing Congress to pass the Snyder Act, which extends citizenship to all Native people. Zitkala-Sa’s activism in the 1920s and 30s comes on the heels of the 19th Amendment’s passage, when she reminded the National Women’s Party that Native women did not share in the victory. As a continuation of the work to enfranchise Native women, Native suffragists also propelled the passage of the Wheeler-Howard Act of 1934, which returned governance power to tribes and halted U.S. government breakups of tribal lands.

Because the Act leaves in place state control over voting rights, many states continue to disenfranchise Indigenous men and women until more than 40 years later.

1926

Activist Zitkala-Ša establishes the National Council of American Indians to lobby for education and civil rights for Native people – including access to the ballot.

1935

As was previously the law (beginning in 1929), all Puerto Rican women, not just those who are literate, gain the right to vote. Puerto Ricans and citizens of other U.S. territories are unable to vote in presidential elections and do not have voting representation in Congress.

1935

Following a lawsuit, women residents of the U.S. Virgin Islands are granted suffrage.

1943

Dec 17

The Magnuson Act repeals the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, and Chinese immigrants, including women, are able to become US citizens. Some already in the US are able to naturalize.

1950

Aug 1

The Organic Act of Guam is signed by President Truman and grants U.S. citizenship to the women and men of Guam, along with the ability to vote (with the same limitations as other U.S. territories).

1954

The Immigration and Nationality Act (also known as the McCarran-Walter Act) becomes federal law. It abolishes direct racial barriers to US immigration. While residents of Chinese origin were able to become US citizens by the Magnuson Act of 1943, this law allows those of Japanese and Korean origin, as well as those from other Asian nations, to naturalize as U.S. citizens for the first time.

1961

March 29

The 23rd amendment is ratified (after passage in 1960) and grants Washington, D.C. citizens the right to vote in presidential elections. To this day, residents of the capitol have no voting representation in Congress.

1962

New Mexico becomes the last state to enfranchise Native Americans. Even with the right to vote, Native Americans will continue to see their access to voting rights blocked by tactics such as poll taxes, literacy tests, fraud and intimidation, aimed at communities of color more largely, until the Voting Rights Act is passed in 1965.

1963

Though efforts to drive up Black voter registration in the South increase, state officials undermine the registration movement using poll and other voting taxes, literacy tests, and intimidation.

1963

Aug 28

Approximately 250,000 people attend the March on Washington to advocate for the civil and economic rights of Black Americans. Martin Luther King Jr., delivers his historic “I Have a Dream” speech echoing a call to end racism. The event ultimately increases pressure to pass the Civil Rights Act the following year.

1964

Jan 23

The 24th Amendment is ratified and abolishes poll taxes in elections for federal officials. Five states still retain a poll tax (Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia) until 1966, when the Supreme Court rules that poll taxes for any level of election are unconstitutional.

1964

July 2

The Civil Rights Act is signed into law. Though the Act includes provisions to strengthen the voting rights of Black men and women in the South, these measures do not deter states and election officials from discriminatory practices that continue to deny the vote.

1965

Patsy Mink of Hawaii becomes the first Asian-American woman, as a third-generation Japanese-American, to serve in the U.S. Congress for a total of 12 terms.

1965

March 7

Civil rights leaders, including Amelia Boynton and Diane Nash, organize the Selma to Montgomery Marches, three demonstrations intended to shine light on the continued discrimination faced by Black Americans who desired to exercise their right to vote. The first march becomes known as “Bloody Sunday” due to televised brutal attacks on the activists by the police.

1965

Aug 6

The Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark piece of federal legislation that prohibits racial discrimination in voting, goes into effect. The bill outlaws discriminatory tactics (such as poll taxes, literacy tests, fraud and harassment) designed to suppress Black Americans and other people of color from voting. It also authorizes the U.S. Attorney General to send federal officials to the South to register Black voters in the event that local registrars do not comply with the law, and authorizes the federal government to supervise elections in districts that had records of disenfranchisement.

1967

Despite becoming a U.S. territory in 1900, residents of American Samoa are finally granted universal suffrage as a result of the territory’s adoption of its own Constitution.

1969

Jan 3

Shirley Chisholm becomes the first Black woman elected to U.S. Congress and serves more than seven terms in office. In 1972, she launches a presidential bid for the Democratic Party that receives national attention.

1971

July 1

The 26th Amendment is passed and lowers the voting age from 21 to 18 years old in all elections.

1975

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is expanded to prohibit discriminatory practices targeted at language minorities. This outlaws requiring ballots and voting information to be exclusively in English and requires certain voting materials be provided in several languages, no longer excluding people who don’t speak English from the voting process. Initially, it is limited to localities where a language minority group makes up more than 5% of the voting-age population and, later, expands to cover jurisdictions with 10,000 or more people of the voting-age population (or 5%, whichever is less).

1989

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen wins a special election and becomes the first Cuban-American and Latina elected to Congress.

1993

The National Voter Registration Act is passed, which increases the number of eligible voters by allowing citizens to register at the Department of Motor Vehicles as well as public assistance and disabilities agencies.

2000

Oct

A federal court decides that Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico are U.S. citizens, but they cannot vote in presidential elections. While political parties have the ability to include them in the primary selection process, a total of 4.1 million residents of US territories (including Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands) are ineligible to vote for President.

2001

The National Commission on Federal Election Reform recommends that all states allow felons to regain their right to vote upon completion of their criminal sentences.

2002

In response to the disputed 2000 presidential election, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) passes. This massive voting reform effort requires states to comply with a federal mandate for provisional ballots, disability access, electronic voting and computerized voting lists, and a requirement for first-time voters to present identification before voting.

2009

The Military and Overseas Empowerment Act enables more efficient means for troops stationed overseas and expatriates to request and receive absentee ballots through the mail or electronically.

2013

June 25

In Shelby v. Holder, the Supreme Court weakens voting rights protections by removing the requirement that some states with a history of voter discrimination get federal permission before changing voting rules. Civil rights activists argue the law is still needed to ensure fair political representation and access to voting.

2017

July

Georgia officials purge more than 560,000 “inactive” voters in the single largest removal of voters in history, due to a Georgia law known as “use it or lose it,” which allows election officials to flag registrations for removal because voters have sat out several elections.

2019

Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland become the first Native American women to serve in Congress. They are among just 300 representatives of Native American descent out of approximately 12,000 total Congress members elected since 1789.