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Suffrage is the right to vote. The historical trend in the United States has been toward universal suffrage, the right to vote has always been subject to limitations. During the colonial period, suffrage was limited primarily to white male landowners, or to those white males who paid annual taxes. Generally landless men (both white and nonwhite), women, most former and current slaves, the unemployed, and many non-Christians were forbidden from voting."
Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John Adams “Remember the Ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors... Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation ("Abigail Adams").
In July, 1848 The Seneca Falls Convention is said to have "launched the women’s suffrage movement. The convention proceeded to discuss the 11 resolutions of "The Declaration of Sentiments." All passed unanimously except for the ninth resolution, which demanded the right to vote for women ("Seneca Falls Convention")."
At the 1851 Women's Rights Convention, Sojourner Truth delivered what is now recognized as one of the most famous abolitionist and women's rights speeches in American history, "Aint't I a Woman?"
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association, which coordinated the national suffrage movement.
Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and other conservative activists formed the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) supported the 15th Amendment, and worked for woman suffrage through amending individual state constitutions. "The AWSA quickly became the more popular organization because it was more moderate in its aims (Crusade for the Vote)."
Wyoming granted women the right to vote. Western states led the nation in approving women’s suffrage. Though some men recognized the important role women played in the frontier settlement, others voted for women’s suffrage only to bolster the strength of conservative voting blocks.
"Senator Aaron Sargent of California (whose wife, suffragist Ellen Clark Sargent, was a friend to Susan B. Anthony) introduced a resolution for an amendment to the Constitution to provide for woman suffrage. It was argued about for nine years till finally failing to pass in 1887. It failed by the lopsided margin of 16 to 34 ("Women Suffrage Centennial")."
"Susanna Salter was voted the first woman mayor in the U.S." ("Susanna Madora Salter"). She was nominated at first as a joke but then won two-thirds of the vote, just weeks after Kansas women won the vote.
"The National American Woman Sufferage (NAWSA) was the result of a merger between two rival factions--the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). The organization was transformed into the League of Women Voters" ("The National American Woman Suffrage Association").
White suffragists and their organizations ignored the challenges that African American women faced. "In the 1880s, black reformers began organizing their own groups. In 1896, they founded the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), which became the largest federation of local black women’s clubs" ("National Association of Colored Women").
"On March 3, 1913, the day before the presidential inauguration, thousands of women marched along Pennsylvania Avenue. The crowd of at least 250,000 people did not stay on the sidewalk. They were manhandled and spat upon. The women reported that they received no assistance from nearby police officers" ("1913 Woman Suffrage Procession").
Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, Americans lead by the militant tactics of the British suffrage movement, were appointed to the NAWSA Congressional Committee. "At odds with NAWSA over tactics and goals, Paul and Burns founded the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CU)" ("Historical Overview of the National Woman's Party").
"In January 1917 the CU and National Woman's Party (NWP) began to picket the White House. Beginning in June 1917, suffrage protestors were arrested, imprisoned, and often force-fed when they went on hunger strikes to protest being denied political prisoner status" ("Historical Overview of the National Woman's Party").
The 19th Amendment was certified by U.S. Secretary of State, and women finally achieved the right to vote throughout the United States. The 19th Amendment states, "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 ("19th Amendment").
The websites here are to provide a good overall history of the 19th Amendment and Women's Suffrage. They also provide links to online exhibits, educational resources, primary resources, and podcasts.
Did passing the 19th Amendment guarantee the right to vote for all women? How did the fight for women's right to vote start? Who were the leaders of the movement? Learn the stories of the women who pushed for the right to vote despite being jailed and beaten, learn how the crusade for abolition inspired the vote for women, all the good, bad, and unknown details of history.
A collection of videos and documentaries through YouTube, Kanopy, Academic Video Online, and Films on Demand. With the databases through the library, you will need to log in using your library barcode (on the back of your ID) or with your Lone Star username and password.
A selection of scholarly articles and e-books offered through LSC-University Park, but there is always more to find, and if you wish to locate more information, please contact one of your friendly librarians.
The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony by 
Cartooning for Suffrage by 
A Voice of Their Own: The Woman Suffrage Press, 1840-1910 by 
The principal orchestrator of the passage of women's suffrage in Texas, a founder and national officer of the League of Women Voters, the first woman to run for a U.S. Senate seat from Texas, and a candidate for that state's governor, Minnie Fisher Cunningham was one of the first Americanwomen to pursue a career in party politics.
The first comprehensive, fully documented biography of the most important woman suffragist and feminist reformer in nineteenth-century America, In Her Own Right restores Elizabeth Cady Stanton to her true place in history.
In a quiet town of Seneca Falls, New York, over the course of two days in July, 1848, a small group of women and men, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, held a convention that would launch the woman's rights movement and change the course of history.
A pivotal leader in the fight for both abolition and gender equality, her achievements marked the beginning of the women's rights movement and helped to lay the groundwork for the eventual winning of women's suffrage. Yet, today most Americans have never heard of Lucy Stone.
Press, Platform, Pulpit examines how early black feminism goes public by sheding new light on some of the major figures of early black feminism as well as bringing forward some lesser-known individuals who helped shape various reform movements.
The advocates of woman suffrage and black suffrage came to a bitter falling-out in the midst of Reconstruction, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton opposed the 15th Amendment because it granted the vote to black men but not to women. How did these two causes, so long allied, come to this?
Pioneering African American journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) is widely remembered for her courageous antilynching crusade in the 1890s; the full range of her struggles against injustice is not as well known.
By identifying key turning points for black women, the essays create a new chronology and a new paradigm for historical analysis. The chronology begins in 1837 with the interracial meeting of antislavery women in New York City and concludes with the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Alice Paul has long been an elusive figure in the political history of American women. This biography of Paul's early years and suffrage leadership offers fresh insight into her private persona and public image, examining for the first time the sources of Paul's ambition and the growth of her political consciousness.
Uncovers how women in the West fought for the right to vote. By the end of 1914, almost every Western state and territory had enfranchised its female citizens in the greatest innovation in participatory democracy since Reconstruction.
Women Will Vote makes clear how actions of New York's patchwork of suffrage advocates heralded a gigantic political, social, and legal shift in the United States.
Inez Milholland was the most glamorous suffragist of the 1910s and a fearless crusader for women's rights. Moving in radical circles, she agitated for social change in the prewar years, and she epitomized the independent New Woman of the time.
An essential examination of the woman suffrage movement In recent decades, the woman suffrage movement has taken on new significance for women's history.
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