Thanks to Amendment 19, when you turn 18, you’ll be able to vote. But, believe it or not, before 1920 women were barred from the voting booths.

Amendment 19 was a long time coming. In 1777, New Jersey had given women the right to vote but later revoked that right.  The mid-nineteenth century witnessed the birth of a powerful women’s movement that began a decades-long battle over the right to vote. The first call for women’s suffrage came during the Seneca Fall’s Convention in 1848. Elizabeth Cady Stanton introduced a “Declaration of Sentiments” (a play on The Declaration of Independence) that granted women and men equal rights and included a list of gripes the women’s movement wanted to address.

Thirty years later, in 1878, a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote was presented to Congress but it was no walk in the park. Amendment 19 had to go before Congress eight times before it was approved!

During that time, some states had already begun to allow women to vote. Our compliments to Wyoming (who, in 1890, was the first), Colorado, Idaho, and Utah. There were others too. In fact, by the time Congress finally started to consider women’s suffrage, 11 other states had given women full voting rights and 14 had granted limited suffrage.

Even though we got the vote, women didn’t have the same privileges as men in the eyes of the law. So, once Amendment 19 was passed, the women’s movement began pushing for an equal right amendment. Unfortunately it wasn’t taken seriously for another 50 years and was never passed.