The Suffrage Movement- Essay

On August 18, 1920, after a long and difficult struggle, women suffragists led the fight to be granted the right to vote with the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment. Though the ratification did not guarantee women full equality and unjustly barred women of color with many racial barriers, it served as a first step in granting women full citizenship in the United States.

 

The fight began around the 1820s before the Civil War when the right to vote was given to all white men no matter how much property or money they had. At this time, the general mindset of American people was that women would remain within their homes playing the role of a good submissive housewife and mother; but most importantly the general population believed that they should stay uninvolved in politics (“Women’s Suffrage - the U.S. Movement, Leaders & 19th Amendment”). In 1848, a group was formed - mostly of women, but with a small number of men - gathered in New York to discuss the lack of rights bestowed upon women. At this gathering called the Seneca Falls Convention, almost every attendee agreed that they saw women as individuals worthy of having their own individual political views (Seneca Falls Convention). They argued that the words stated in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” (Declaration of Independence: A Transcription) needed to evolve to state that “all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness”. The convention interpreted that the inherent meaning of the Constitution must apply to everyone, including women, and that they should also be given the right to vote. This idea continued to gain momentum throughout the country following the convention.  

 

Once the Civil War ended in 1865, three Amendments were added to the Constitution - two of which were leveraged by suffragists in their fight for the women’s right to vote. The Fourteenth Amendment which was ratified in 1868, gave every person equal protection under the law. The suffragists used this to advance their case by saying that the amendments never actually defined “citizens” as male, and they pushed this case with lawmakers to try and achieve universal suffrage (“14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights”). When the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870, the suffragists took a different approach. The Fifteenth Amendment gave African Americans the right to vote (“15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Voting Rights”), but instead of viewing this as progress and supporting it, the suffragists intentionally sided with racist Southerners who discouraged the bill. They reasoned that white women's votes could counterbalance the votes cast by African Americans. Neither of these arguments directly helped the suffragists’ case, and sadly African Americans were used as sacrificial lambs. Regardless, the suffragists were solely focused on expanding women’s rights and believed that this was a justified way to advance their own cause.

 

In 1890, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was formed with a different approach than what had previously been attempted. Instead of arguing that women deserve the right to vote because they were basically the same as men, they stated that women deserved the equal right to vote because they were different from men and could provide a different perspective at the ballot box. They claimed that the American mindset that women should be domesticized would actually be an advantage to a representative democracy. This strategy partially worked and in 1910 (when persistent women suffragists became the first people to doggedly protest in front of the White House) some of the western states began to give women the right to vote (“The Complex History of the Women's Suffrage Movement”). Despite this huge step toward achieving their goal, the southern and eastern states still continued to resist. To counter this, the NAWSA’s then president, Carrie Chapman Catt, created a “winning plan” which refocused and redirected all of the past efforts of the suffragists (including picketing, silent vigils, and hunger strikes) and instructed the advocates to focus solely on constitutional amendments in previously uncooperative states. 

 

Although World War 1 slowed the progress of the suffragists’ cause, it ultimately benefited the movement. Women participated in the workforce and contributed significantly by taking over the jobs vacated by men who had gone overseas to fight in the war effort. Their service strengthened the women’s suffrage movement and influenced public opinion to promote the argument that women were just as patriotic and deserved as much citizenship as men. Finally on August 18th, 1920, after a long and difficult road, relying on the resilience and contribution of many female leaders, including many women of color, the Nineteenth Amendment was finally ratified (“19th Amendment - Definition, Passage & Summary”), granting over eight million women all across the United States the legal right to vote and set the course for the unfinished struggle for full equality.