Women’s Up to the 19th Amendment

1848: - first women’s rights convention held in Seneca, NY ​ ​ ​

1850: The first national convention for women’s rights was held in Worcester, Massachusetts. It ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ had a strong alliance with the Abolitionist Movement. & are both in attendance.

1851: Akron, OH, Sojourner Truth, a former slave, delivers her speech, ​ ​ ​ “Ain’t I a ?” at a women’s rights convention.

1861-1865 Civil War ​

1866: and Susan B. Anthony formed the ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ American Equal Rights Association, a group dedicated to suffrage for everyone regardless of gender or race.

1870: 15th Amendment grants the right to vote to all men, leaves out ​ ​ ​ women. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton opposed the 15th Amendment because it didn’t include women.

1870: The American Equal Rights Association had split into two rival ​ groups, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) led by Anthony and Stanton and the American Woman Suffrage Association led by . ​

1872: Susan B. Anthony and several other women are arrested for illegally voting and Sojourner ​ Truth tries to vote but is turned away.

1873: US vs. Susan B. Anthony rules that women aren’t citizens and therefore can’t vote. ​ ​ ​

1890: Wyoming is the first state to give all women the right to vote in all elections. ​

1890: The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) is formed. Elizabeth Cady ​ ​ ​ Stanton is the first president. The two rival groups, the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association, merged into one group again, and created the NAWSA. For many years, the NAWSA will be the main voice for women’s suffrage.

1896: Mary Church Terrell joins the NAWSA and becomes one of its very few black members. ​ ​ ​ She argued the NAWSA needed to work to be more inclusive. ​ ​

1896: Mary Church Terrell helped bring together a coalition of more than a hundred local black ​ ​ ​ women’s clubs to form the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). Her quote, “Lifting as we climb,” became its motto and she served as the president of the NACW from 1896 to 1901.

1900: Nearly every state has passed a law allowing married women the right to keep their own ​ wares and to own property in their own names

1912: Chinese American women and American suffrage groups, ​ ​ pledge their support for the suffrage efforts in China and in America. Doctor S.K. Chan, a Chinese American, spoke at a historic joint ​ banquet.

1912: A parade and procession happened in City. Nearly ​ 10,000 women and men participated. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, and her ​ ​ mother marched. Mabel was only 16 and was already a known activist in the suffrage movement and was interviewed by the New York Tribune prior to the ​ ​ parade. She rode a horse in the parade and used suffragette colors.

1913: Sorority is founded by 22 ​ African American students at . They were the only African American women’s organization to march in the 1913 Washington D.C. suffrage parade in 1913. Unfortunately, they were told to march in the back of the parade. Mary Church Terrell marched with the sorority and had been named an honorary member.

1913: Suffragist organized a massive parade down ​ ​ Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C. ​ and , working for the NAWSA, helped organize this parade and strategically scheduled it for the day before President Wilson’s second inauguration.

1913: Because of a conflict in strategies, Lucy Burns and Alice Paul leave the NAWSA (led at the ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ time by ) to form a separate party, the National Women’s Party (NWP). They ​ ​ borrowed strategies from the more radical tactics of women’s suffrage groups in .

1914: Mabel Ping-Hua Lee attends Barnard College and writes essays for The Chinese Students’ ​ ​ ​ ​ Monthly. In 1914, she wrote an essay titled “The Meaning of Woman Suffrage,” which stated the ​ right to vote for women was necessary for a democracy.

1917: In January, the National Women’s Party began picketing outside of the White House. In ​ ​ ​ June, picketers were arrested on charges of obstructing the sidewalk. The women were sentenced to six months in jail. In November, the women were released after public outcry of the treatment of ​ the women in jail. On multiple occasions, Mary Church Terrell, and her daughter Phyllis,picketed ​ with the NWP outside of the White House.

1917: Jeannette Rankin of was sworn as the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress. ​ ​ ​

1918: A suffrage amendment to the Constitution passes in the House of Representatives by only ​ one vote and President Wilson addresses the Senate about doing the same.

1919: The Nineteenth Amendment finally passed in the Senate, by two votes, and the ratification ​ process began.

1920: Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the 19th ​ Amendment. Members of the State Senate had passed it, but it came down to a tie in the State House of Representatives. The tie was broken by a young representative named Harry Burn. He originally pledged to vote no, but changed his mind at the last minute because of the advice from his mother Phoebe. ​ ​

1920: The 19th Amendment is ratified by the minimum required ​ states (three quarters), granting women the right to vote.

Photos/Images: (1864) Sojourner Truth. I sell the shadow to support the substance. Michigan United States, 1864. Sojourner Truth, Eastern District, Michigan. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/scsm000880/.

Dale, B. [Cover program for the National American Women's Suffrage Association procession]. (1913). Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.. Retrieved from Academic Search database.

(ca. 1920) Alice Paul, full-length portrait, standing, facing left, raising glass with right hand. , ca. 1920. Sept. 3. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/97500088/. ​ ​ https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/women-fight-for-the-vote/about-this-exhibition/new-tactics-for-a-new-generati on-1890-1915/western-states-pave-the-way/suffrage-follows-lady-liberty-eastward-in-the-awakening/ Hy [Henry] Mayer. “The Awakening.” Puck, vol. 77, no. 1981 (February 20, 1915). Prints and Photographs ​ ​ ​ ​ Division, Library of Congress (0312.00.00)