Fight for the Right: 100 Years of Women Voting

In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first U.S. women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, NY. Her Declaration of Sentiments listed 19 injustices suffered by women and included suffrage among its resolutions. The convention has been called the spark that kindled the American women’s movement.

Susan B. Anthony (seated, second from left) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (seated, fourth from left) posed with other early leaders of the women's suffrage movement in the 1880s.

Lydia Sayer Hasbrouck believed that women couldn't achieve equality while wearing constricting, heavy, impractical clothing. She founded The Sibyl, which advocated for dress reform, as illustrated in the masthead. Later suffragists adopted traditional "feminine" styles seen as less threatening, but the dress reform movement opened new avenues for women.

Susan B. Anthony was arrested and Judge Hunt found her guilty of “illegally” voting in 1872. This letter expresses her frustration at the injustice to women, both Black and white, who had to keep fighting for the vote on a state by state basis, while Black men won it nationally in 1870 with the passage of the 15th Amendment.

After trying to register to vote in 1871 in Santa Cruz, CA, and being denied, Ellen Van Valkenburg took her case all the way to the California Supreme Court. Her effort got attention, but not the vote; they ruled that her 14th Amendment citizen rights did not include voting.

After two earlier assembly bills introduced in 1893 failed, California Constitutional Amendment 11 made the state ballot in November 1896, giving Californians their first chance to vote for women’s suffrage. It also failed, with roughly 55% of voters opposing the measure. This ribbon lapel pin from the campaign is one of only two known to exist today.

The modern bicycle played a key role in the suffrage movement. In ankle-baring outfits that made it easier to ride—often viewed as shockingly revealing—women bicyclists pushed social norms. They could go where they wanted when they wanted without relying on men to take them, and organize for additional rights—such as the right to vote.

Telephones, still a novel invention at the turn of the century, became vital to the suffrage movement as more people got them in their homes. Suffragists saw the value, and quickly started using phones to reach beyond their own communities.

Defying the then-common idea that a “woman’s place is in the home,” 300 women marched through the streets of Oakland, CA, in 1908, proudly displaying the banner of the California Equal Suffrage Association. It was one of the earliest suffrage marches and would later serve as a model on a national level.

Suffragists were strategic in crafting their image. Their modest dress reinforced traditional roles, making their message—a fierce call for new rights—seem less threatening. Wearing white for public demonstrations, they stood out from the crowds and conveyed purity, presenting women as reformers who would bring civility to politics.

A successful businesswoman and active leader in the Black clubs movement in the Oakland, CA, area, Lydia Flood Jackson was a champion of suffrage and civil rights for Black women and other women of color.

In 1908, Maud Younger helped found the Wage Earners’ Equal Suffrage League for Working Women and began traveling across California to promote suffrage. A forceful public speaker, she visited union halls to reach working-class male voters. She also wrote and distributed pamphlets that argued for the voting rights of wage-earning women.

After the first statewide vote failed in 1896, California suffragists kept up the fight, not letting disappointing defeats derail them. After a progressive administration was elected in 1910, suffragists had only eight months to mobilize a massive campaign.

Bertha Margaret Boye’s design for the 1911 campaign won first place in a contest sponsored by San Francisco’s College Equal Suffrage League. Printed on cards, flyers and stamps, the design was one of the movement's most popular images. For a week in August 1911, San Francisco stores plastered the poster in their windows.

During the 1911 campaign, suffragist Maria de Lopez was instrumental in getting the message out to Spanish-speaking people. President of the College Equal Suffrage League, a member of the Votes for Women Club, and a high school teacher from Los Angeles, de Lopez toured the state giving speeches in Spanish and English.

Republican state senator Charles W. Bell sponsored California’s Amendment No. 8 in 1911, arguing that women would “uplift the state” with their intelligence and honesty. Assemblymember H. G. Cattell wrote the ballot argument in favor. He argued that women shouldn’t be subject to taxation without representation.

Assemblymember J.B. Sanford wrote the opposing argument, stating that suffrage was a privilege, not a right, and that women should keep in their proper places in the home.

In November 1911, California voters passed women’s suffrage. Early results showed defeat. But when the count was complete, rural voters had turned the tide. Proposition 4 had won by an average majority of just one vote per precinct. California was the sixth state to approve women’s suffrage, joining Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Washington.

Women legally voted in California for the first time in 1912. With the California win, the number of U.S. women with full suffrage doubled.

California’s success in 1911 bolstered suffrage campaigns in other states and served as a model for suffrage parades, pickets, and strategy. Women in Oregon, Kansas, and Arizona won the right to vote in 1912. The eastern states would prove harder.

In 1911 Charlotta Spears Bass became the first Black woman in the U.S. to own and operate a newspaper. She used The California Eagle to promote many causes important to the Black community, including women’s suffrage.

During its 1912 Convention, the National American Association of Woman Suffrage (NAWSA) appointed Alice Paul and Lucy Burns to lead its Congressional Committee. They would shift focus toward seeking a federal amendment for women's suffrage, rather than a state-by-state approach.

Alice Paul and the National American Woman Suffrage Association held a massive parade in Washington, DC, on March 3, 1913. Many of the thousands of marchers were attacked while police stood by. Over 100 women were hospitalized for injuries. The chaos actually served the cause, attracting news coverage and congressional hearings.

The 1913 suffrage parade was the first large-scale march on Washington in U.S. history. Over five thousand suffragists marched up Pennsylvania Avenue, along with over 20 parade floats, nine bands, and four mounted brigades.

Labor lawyer Inez Milholland turned suffrage celebrity after leading the 1913 parade. In 1916, she went on a speaking tour of the West, despite suffering from anemia. She collapsed during a speech in Los Angeles and died a month later. Her last public words were, “How long must women wait for liberty?”

Journalist, educator, and activist Ida B. Wells had battled inequality since the 1880s. She condemned lynching, promoted suffrage, and encouraged women of color to participate in politics. At the 1913 march, she joined her state's delegation despite being told to march at the back with other Black suffragists.

At odds with NAWSA over tactics and goals, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns founded the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CU) in April 1913 to campaign for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women's suffrage. Prominent Californian Phoebe Hearst was a member of CU's national advisory council.

Lillian Harris Coffin was another member of the Advisory Council of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage. One of California's most active club women, she had founded the San Francisco Equal Suffrage League in 1906 and headed the Central Committee of the California Equal Suffrage League.

Organization was everything. As the movement spread, women’s clubs hosted “suffrage schools,” where members trained in organizing and public speaking.

W.E.B. Du Bois was a staunch supporter of the women’s suffrage movement. He used the magazine he edited, the NAACP’s The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races, to advance the cause. From 1911 to 1920, he published essays from leading women’s suffrage advocates.

After California women won the vote, suffragists from the state turned their attention to the national cause. Envoys from San Francisco are shown here on their way to Washington to present a petition to Congress containing more than 500,000 signatures in favor of a constitutional amendment.

The “Votes for Women” slogan was popularized on such merchandise as soaps, trading cards, sheet music, paper cups, cookbooks, and toys like this spinner.

In January 1917, the National Woman’s Party began a picket outside the White House to protest inaction on a federal amendment. The "Silent Sentinels" took turns standing with banners bearing messages aimed at President Woodrow Wilson. Over the two-and-half year protest, many of the nearly 2,000 picketers were harassed and arrested.

This banner, also shown in the previous slide, was used during the Silent Sentinels' White House picket between 1917 and 1920. Covered widely in the newspapers and deemed unpatriotic during WWI, the protest sparked controversy.

Vivian Pierce of San Diego held another homemade suffrage banner, bearing one of the movement's most famous slogans, "Forward into Light," outside suffrage headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The 1918 pandemic slowed passage of the 19th Amendment. Just before a deadly second wave of influenza hit the U.S. in Fall 1918, women’s suffrage was voted down in the Senate. Suffragists poised to jump back into campaigning saw their efforts grind to halt. With public gatherings now impossible, they turned to the telephone, letters, and newspapers to keep the pressure on.

As the fight for a federal amendment intensified, suffragists were arrested for picketing and other "offenses." When they protested their imprisonment with hunger strikes, they were force-fed. This issue of The Suffragist was devoted to a national "Prison Special" speaking tour.

In 1919, National Woman's Party activists went on a nationwide "Prison Special" tour, speaking about their experiences being jailed for demonstrating for the right to vote. Here, speakers in prison dresses speak to a San Francisco crowd.

Years of effort finally paid off when the Senate passed the 19th Amendment in June 1919. But it still had to be approved by 2/3 of the states to take effect. California became the 18th state to ratify on November 1, 1919.

The 19th Amendment was added to the Constitution after Tennessee—the 36th and final state needed to reach the required majority—ratified it with one tie-breaking vote in the state House of Representatives on August 18, 1920. A young Tennessee Congressman stunned onlookers when he cast the last vote needed—changing his mind after receiving a note from his mother.