Nineteenth Amendment grants US women the vote

Date

18 August 1920 (certified 26 August)

Category

Social & demographic

Region

North America (United States)

Era

Modern

Significance

The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited the denial of the right to vote on the basis of sex.

Passed by Congress on 4 June 1919, it was ratified when Tennessee became the decisive 36th state on 18 August 1920, meeting the three-quarters threshold; Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified ratification on 26 August 1920. The amendment was the culmination of more than seven decades of organised campaigning dating back to the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, led by activists including Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul. It enfranchised roughly 26 million American women of voting age. In practice, however, discriminatory state laws, poll taxes and other barriers continued to disenfranchise many women of colour, particularly in the South, until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As the largest single enfranchisement of women to that point and a milestone in a major world power, the amendment became a reference point for suffrage movements internationally.

Empires active in 18 August 1920 (certified 26 August)

• Empire of Japan
  1868 CE – 1947 CE
• French Colonial Empire (Second)
  1830 CE – 1962 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE – 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE
• Solomonic dynasty
  1270 CE – 1974 CE

Related social & demographic events

• Influenza pandemic of 1918–1920
  1918–1920
• The Holocaust and the 'Final Solution'
  1941–1945
• Bengal Famine of 1943
  1943–1944
• Emancipation of the serfs in Russia
  3 March 1861 (19 February O.S.)
• The Great Irish Famine
  1845–1852
• May Fourth Movement in China
  4 May 1919

Further reading

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

The wider story

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari

Global best-seller on how our species, its populations and societies remade the world.

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