When did women gain the right to vote? The history of the 19th Amendment.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, has made history as the first woman and the first Black and South Asian individual to be elected vice president. Should she win against Republican candidate Donald Trump in the upcoming November election, she would become the first female president.
Today, American citizens can vote regardless of race or gender, but that hasn’t always been the case. When the U.S. was founded nearly 250 years ago, casting a ballot was reserved for white, land-owning men. It wasn’t until 1920, after the passage and ratification of the 19th Amendment, that women were finally allowed to vote.
These days, women are among the most politically engaged groups in the U.S., registering to vote and participating in elections at a higher rate than men, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. Here’s a look at key moments in the women’s suffrage movement and the landmark legislation that expanded the opportunity to vote to all women.
19th Amendment
Women in the U.S. won the right to vote for the first time in 1920 when Congress ratified the 19th Amendment. The fight for women’s suffrage stretched back to at least 1848, when early suffragette leaders like Cady Stanton organized the first women’s rights convention in the United States in Seneca Falls, N.Y.
However, in practice, the 19th Amendment only expanded the right to vote to white women. Though many women of color, including Sojourner Truth and Mary Church Terrell, fought for Black women to be included in the fight for voting rights, they were ultimately shut out from the suffrage movement.
More: ‘Brilliant and politically savvy:’ The roles of African American women in the fight to vote
Indian Citizenship Act
Native Americans were granted U.S. citizenship in 1924 when Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act. But many states had laws on the books that restricted Indigenous residents from accessing their right to vote.
It took until 1948 for Arizona’s Supreme Court to strike down its constitutional provision denying Native Americans their right to vote, making it the last state in the nation to do so.
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Historically, voters of color, especially Black voters, faced voter suppression tactics in many southern states that supported racial segregation after the Civil War—this period, often referred to as the “Jim Crow era,” frequently involved harassment, intimidation and physical violence when attempting to register or vote.
Signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on August 6, 1965, the historical legislation outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests and poll taxes as a prerequisite to voting.
By the end of 1965, a quarter of a million new Black voters had been registered, one-third by federal examiners. By the end of 1966, only four out of 13 southern states had fewer than 50 percent of African Americans registered to vote. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was readopted and strengthened in 1970, 1975, and 1982.