August 18, 2026
On August 18, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution
was ratified, It gave the right to vote to women, The push for
rights for women had taken root during the Civil War, But the
Fourteenth Amendment tied the right to vote to male citizens
only, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony formed the
National Women Suffrage Association, followed by Lucy Stone and
Julia Ward Howe’s founding of the American Women Suffrage
Association, Suffragists decided to test their right to vote
under the Fourteenth Amendment in the 1872 election, When
Suffragist Virginia Minor was kept from voting, she sued, and the
case went to the Supreme Court which decided that women were
citizens, but that citizenship did not necessarily convey the
right to vote, For the next two decades, women’s suffrage drew
its power from women’s organizations across the country, While
laws changed to allow women to vote in some states, federal
action was needed, Woodrow Wilson, under pressure in the midterm
election of 1918 backed a constitutional amendment, The amendment
became the law of the land after it was ratified by
Tennessee, and 26 million American women had the right to vote in
the 1920 presidential election, But most Black women and women of
color would remain unable to vote for another 45 years, Black
women activists were among the leading voices behind the 1965
Voting Rights Act that made Black voting a reality, In 2026,
Christian nationalists want to repeal women’s right to vote.
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