The 19th Amendment: Women Win the Vote (1917-1920)

To protest the Senate’s inaction, women set up cauldrons outside the White House gates and other Washington, D.C., locations in 1919. Day and night, they maintained the flames by burning Wilson’s speeches—and throwing in a paper effigy of the president.

Mercer, a businesswoman from Virginia, was one of two African-American women who participated in the 1919 watchfire demonstrations. As a member of the Norfolk branch of the National Woman’s Party, she joined the final watchfire protest and was arrested in February 1919. She spent five days in jail.

This photograph shows police confronting National Woman’s Party picketers on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C. As the women near the front of the line reach the policemen, the authorities seize their banners and arrest them.

In 1917, twenty-one-year-old Ernestine Hara Kettler joined the White House picketers before being arrested and serving a harrowing prison sentence. Born to a Romanian Jewish family, Kettler immigrated to the United States in 1907 and eventually joined New York City’s labor movement.

A suffragist from Philadelphia, Dora Lewis served as an officer in the National Woman’s Party. She participated in protests in Washington, D.C., ultimately facing arrest and serving several prison sentences.

In 1918, Dora Lewis was released from jail after five days of hunger striking.

After Congress rejected the suffrage amendment in 1918, militant suffragists launched the Prison Special, a cross-country speaking engagement. Dressed in prison clothing, they rode a train and spoke on behalf of candidates who supported policy change in Washington, D.C.

“The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class,—it is the cause of human kind, the very birthright of humanity. . . . It is not the intelligent woman vs. the ignorant woman; nor the white woman vs. the black, the brown, and the red,—it is not even the cause of woman vs. man. Nay, ‘tis woman’s strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice.” (1892)

Note: This is a modern recording.

“The old arguments such as women should not vote because they cannot fight is ‘tommy-rot.’ The perpetuity of our government rests not entirely on physical force. This was clearly demonstrated during the recent war when women were called upon to help win the war.” (1920)

Note: This is a modern recording.

Some suffragists saw the war as an opportunity to place more pressure on Congress. National Woman’s Party lobbyists, seen here, created detailed files on each senator who opposed the amendment. They recorded the specific routines and home states of each senator.

The National Woman’s Party (NWP) sewed a star on this banner as each state ratified the 19th Amendment. When Tennessee ratified in August 1920, suffrage leader Alice Paul unfurled the completed banner from the NWP headquarters. A few months later, millions of women across the country voted under the 19th Amendment.

As a leader in the 1960s voting rights movement and a community organizer in Mississippi, Hamer helped organize the 1964 Freedom Summer to register African-American voters in the South. Thanks to decades of organizing among civil rights advocates like Hamer, Congress eventually passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act to prevent racial discrimination in voting.

In August 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the the historic legislation into law. After signing, the president turned to shake hands with Martin Luther King, Jr., who attended the ceremony with other civil rights advocates.