Amendment XIX (19)

Amendment XIX

Ratified August 18, 1920.

     The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

     Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.


     This amendment is very important because it gave women the right to vote. Even though the fourteenth amendment gave citizenship rights and allowed for colored people to vote, it did not give women the right to vote. Women's suffrage, which is the right of women to vote on the same terms as men, initially was denied. Many movements and organizations dedicated to women's rights existed previously. One such movement was the 1848 Seneca Falls convention in New York which sparked the start of the American women's rights movements. During the Reconstruction era, leaders for women's rights leaders advocated for inclusion of universal suffrage as a civil right for the Reconstruction amendments. In section 2 of the fourteenth amendment, discrimination between men and women were stated clearly by penalizing states who deprived adult male citizens of the vote, but not for denying the vote to adult female citizens. Susan B. Anthony played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. She founded the New York Women's State Temperance Society in 1852, with her partner in crime, Elizabeth Stanton. Anthony was denied from being able to speak at a temperance conference because she was a woman. They started many other campaigns that helped with women's suffrage and women's rights all together. Thanks to these two women, the nineteenth amendment was eventually drafted.

     This poster was meant for the war effort during World War II. As men were getting shipped off to war, someone had to replace there jobs. Many of these people were women. This poster was later used to help campaign for women's suffrage as well as other women's rights.

 

     This picture depicts two women from the 1900's holding up a sign that was used during the women's suffrage movements. This shows what some of the women did to try and push the passing of the nineteenth amendment.