Ratification of the 19th Amendment
Starting in 1910, some states in the West began to extend the vote to women for the first time in almost 20 years. (Idaho and Utah had given women the right to vote at the end of the 19th century.) Still, the more established Southern and Eastern states resisted. In 1916, NAWSA president Carrie Chapman Catt unveiled what she called a “Winning Plan” to get the vote at last: a blitz campaign that mobilized state and local suffrage organizations all over the country, with special focus on those uncooperative regions. Meanwhile, a splinter group called the National Women’s Party focused on more radical, militant tactics like hunger strikes and White House pickets to win dramatic publicity for their cause.
World War I slowed the suffragists’ campaign but helped them in a way as well: Women’s work on behalf of the war effort, activists pointed out, proved that they were just as patriotic and deserving of citizenship as men, and on August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified by the U.S. Congress.
World War I slowed the suffragists’ campaign but helped them in a way as well: Women’s work on behalf of the war effort, activists pointed out, proved that they were just as patriotic and deserving of citizenship as men, and on August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified by the U.S. Congress.