# Fighting for the Right to Vote

An episode of [Letters from an American](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1730358737), 19 Aug 2026, 12 min.

Audio: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/211913413/3388beb2741c176d527a515ff27fc6cf.mp3

August 18, 2026 On August 18, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, It gave the right to vote to women, The push for rights for women had taken root during the Civil War, But the Fourteenth Amendment tied the right to vote to male citizens only, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony formed the National Women Suffrage Association, followed by Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe’s founding of the American Women Suffrage Association, Suffragists decided to test their right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment in the 1872 election, When Suffragist Virginia Minor was kept from voting, she sued, and the case went to the Supreme Court which decided that women were citizens, but that citizenship did not necessarily convey the right to vote, For the next two decades, women’s suffrage drew its power from women’s organizations across the country, While laws changed to allow women to vote in some states, federal action was needed, Woodrow Wilson, under pressure in the midterm election of 1918 backed a constitutional amendment, The amendment became the law of the land after it was ratified by Tennessee, and 26 million American women had the right to vote in the 1920 presidential election, But most Black women and women of color would remain unable to vote for another 45 years, Black women activists were among the leading voices behind the 1965 Voting Rights Act that made Black voting a reality, In 2026, Christian nationalists want to repeal women’s right to vote. Watch today's recording here: https://www.youtube.com/live/g9TUa1Rwd6U?si=T8_KKcHQZElhpnZ- Get full, free access to Letters from an American here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe You can also find me: Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/hcrichardson.bsky.social Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heathercoxrichardson/?hl=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heathercoxrichardson/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

## Transcript

[0:00] SPEAKER_00: August 18, 2026.
[0:04] SPEAKER_00: On August 18, 1920,
[0:06] SPEAKER_00: the Tennessee legislature ratified the 19th Amendment to the U.S.
[0:10] SPEAKER_00: Constitution by a vote of 50 to 49.
[0:15] SPEAKER_00: The deciding vote came from Harry T.
[0:18] SPEAKER_00: Byrne, who supported suffrage but was under pressure to vote no.
[0:22] SPEAKER_00: His mother had urged him to vote yes, despite the pressure.
[0:27] SPEAKER_00: I believe in full suffrage as a right, he said.
[0:31] SPEAKER_00: I believe we had a moral and legal right to ratify.
[0:35] SPEAKER_00: I know that a mother's advice is always safest for her boy to follow,
[0:40] SPEAKER_00: and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.
[0:45] SPEAKER_00: Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the amendment and the last one necessary
[0:50] SPEAKER_00: to make the amendment the law of the land once the Secretary of State certified it.
[0:56] SPEAKER_00: The new amendment was patterned on the 15th Amendment,
[0:59] SPEAKER_00: which protected the right of black men to vote,
[1:02] SPEAKER_00: and it read,
[1:03] SPEAKER_00: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged
[1:09] SPEAKER_00: by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
[1:15] SPEAKER_00: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
[1:21] SPEAKER_00: Like the momentum for the 15th Amendment,
[1:23] SPEAKER_00: the push for rights for women had taken root during the Civil War,
[1:27] SPEAKER_00: as women backed the United States armies with their money,
[1:30] SPEAKER_00: buying bonds and paying taxes,
[1:33] SPEAKER_00: with their loved ones,
[1:35] SPEAKER_00: sending sons and husbands and fathers to the war front,
[1:39] SPEAKER_00: with their labor,
[1:40] SPEAKER_00: working in factories and fields and taking over from men in the nursing
[1:44] SPEAKER_00: and teaching professions,
[1:46] SPEAKER_00: and even with their lives, spying and fighting for the Union.
[1:51] SPEAKER_00: In the aftermath of the war,
[1:53] SPEAKER_00: as the divided nation was rebuilt,
[1:55] SPEAKER_00: many of them expected they would have a say in how it was reconstructed.
[2:00] SPEAKER_00: But, to their dismay,
[2:02] SPEAKER_00: the 14th Amendment explicitly tied the right to vote to male citizens,
[2:08] SPEAKER_00: inserting the word male into the Constitution for the first time.
[2:14] SPEAKER_00: Boston abolitionist Julia Ward Howe,
[2:17] SPEAKER_00: the author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, was outraged.
[2:21] SPEAKER_00: The laws of the era gave control of her property and her children
[2:25] SPEAKER_00: to her abusive husband,
[2:27] SPEAKER_00: and while far from a rabble-rouser,
[2:29] SPEAKER_00: she wanted the right to adjust those laws so they were fair.
[2:34] SPEAKER_00: In this moment,
[2:35] SPEAKER_00: it seemed the right the founders had articulated in the Declaration of Independence,
[2:40] SPEAKER_00: the right to consent to the government under which one lived,
[2:44] SPEAKER_00: was to be denied to the very women who had helped preserve the country,
[2:49] SPEAKER_00: while white male Confederates and now black men both enjoyed that right.
[2:56] SPEAKER_00: The Civil War came to an end,
[2:58] SPEAKER_00: leaving the slave not only emancipated,
[3:01] SPEAKER_00: but endowed with the full dignity of citizenship.
[3:04] SPEAKER_00: The women of the North had greatly helped to open the door which admitted him
[3:09] SPEAKER_00: to freedom and it safeguarded the ballot.
[3:12] SPEAKER_00: Was this door to be shut in their face?
[3:15] SPEAKER_00: Howe wondered.
[3:17] SPEAKER_00: The next year,
[3:18] SPEAKER_00: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B.
[3:20] SPEAKER_00: Anthony formed the National Women's Suffrage Association,
[3:24] SPEAKER_00: and six months later,
[3:25] SPEAKER_00: Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe founded the American Women's Suffrage Association.
[3:31] SPEAKER_00: The National Women's Suffrage Association wanted a general reworking of gender roles
[3:37] SPEAKER_00: in American society,
[3:39] SPEAKER_00: drawing from the Seneca Falls Convention that Stanton had organized in 1848.
[3:46] SPEAKER_00: That convention's Declaration of Sentiments,
[3:49] SPEAKER_00: patterned explicitly on the Declaration of Independence,
[3:53] SPEAKER_00: asserted that all men and women are created equal,
[3:57] SPEAKER_00: and that the history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on
[4:04] SPEAKER_00: the part of man toward woman,
[4:06] SPEAKER_00: having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.
[4:13] SPEAKER_00: It listed the many ways in which men had fraudulently deprived women
[4:18] SPEAKER_00: of their most sacred rights and insisted that women receive immediate admission
[4:24] SPEAKER_00: to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens
[4:29] SPEAKER_00: of these United States.
[4:32] SPEAKER_00: While the National Women's Suffrage Association excluded men from its membership,
[4:37] SPEAKER_00: the American Women's Suffrage Association made a point of including men equally,
[4:43] SPEAKER_00: as well as black women's suffragists,
[4:45] SPEAKER_00: to indicate that they were interested in the universal right to vote,
[4:50] SPEAKER_00: and only in that right,
[4:52] SPEAKER_00: believing the rest of the rights their rivals demanded would come through voting.
[4:58] SPEAKER_00: The women's suffrage movement had initial success in the western territories,
[5:02] SPEAKER_00: both because lawmakers there were hoping to attract women
[5:06] SPEAKER_00: for their male-heavy communities,
[5:08] SPEAKER_00: and because the same lawmakers were furious at the growing noise about black voting.
[5:14] SPEAKER_00: Wyoming Territory granted women the right to vote in 1869,
[5:19] SPEAKER_00: and lawmakers in Utah Territory followed suit in 1870,
[5:24] SPEAKER_00: expecting that women would vote against polygamy there.
[5:28] SPEAKER_00: When women,
[5:29] SPEAKER_00: in fact,
[5:29] SPEAKER_00: supported polygamy,
[5:31] SPEAKER_00: Utah lawmakers tried unsuccessfully to take their vote away,
[5:36] SPEAKER_00: and the movement for women's suffrage in the West slowed dramatically.
[5:42] SPEAKER_00: Suffragists had hoped that women would be included in the 15th Amendment,
[5:46] SPEAKER_00: and when they were not,
[5:47] SPEAKER_00: decided to test their right to vote under the 14th Amendment in the 1872 election,
[5:55] SPEAKER_00: According to its statement that anyone born in the U.S.
[5:58] SPEAKER_00: was a citizen, they were certainly citizens and thus should be able to vote.
[6:04] SPEAKER_00: In New York State,
[6:06] SPEAKER_00: Susan B.
[6:06] SPEAKER_00: Anthony voted successfully but was later tried and convicted in
[6:11] SPEAKER_00: an all-male courtroom in which she did not have the right to testify for the crime
[6:17] SPEAKER_00: of voting.
[6:19] SPEAKER_00: In Missouri,
[6:20] SPEAKER_00: a voting registrar named Reese Happersett refused
[6:24] SPEAKER_00: to permit suffragist Virginia Minor to register.
[6:28] SPEAKER_00: Minor sued Happersett, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court.
[6:33] SPEAKER_00: In a unanimous decision in 1875,
[6:36] SPEAKER_00: the justices decided that women were indeed citizens,
[6:41] SPEAKER_00: but that citizenship did not necessarily convey the right to vote.
[6:48] SPEAKER_00: This decision meant the fat was in the fire for black Americans in the South,
[6:52] SPEAKER_00: as it paved the way for white supremacists to keep them from the polls in 1876.
[6:59] SPEAKER_00: But it was also a blow to suffragists who recast their claims.
[7:02] SPEAKER_00: And toward the idea that they would be better and more principled voters than
[7:05] SPEAKER_00: the black men and immigrants who, under the law anyway, had the right to vote.
[7:21] SPEAKER_00: For the next two decades,
[7:22] SPEAKER_00: the women's suffrage movement drew its power from
[7:25] SPEAKER_00: the many women's organizations put together across the country by women of all races
[7:31] SPEAKER_00: and backgrounds who came together to stop excessive drinking,
[7:35] SPEAKER_00: clean up the sewage in city streets,
[7:37] SPEAKER_00: protect children, stop lynching, and promote civil rights.
[7:42] SPEAKER_00: Black women like educator Mary Church Terrell and journalist Josephine St.
[7:47] SPEAKER_00: Pierre Ruffin,
[7:48] SPEAKER_00: publisher of the Women's Era,
[7:50] SPEAKER_00: brought a broad lens to the movement from their work for civil rights,
[7:54] SPEAKER_00: but they could not miss that black women stood in between the movements
[7:59] SPEAKER_00: for black rights and women's rights.
[8:01] SPEAKER_00: A position scholar Kimberly Crenshaw would identify in the 20th century as intersectionality.
[8:09] SPEAKER_00: In 1890,
[8:10] SPEAKER_00: the two major suffrage associations merged into
[8:14] SPEAKER_00: the National American Woman's Suffrage Association and worked to change voting laws
[8:20] SPEAKER_00: at the state level.
[8:22] SPEAKER_00: Gradually,
[8:23] SPEAKER_00: Western states and territories permitted women to vote in certain elections until
[8:28] SPEAKER_00: by 1920,
[8:30] SPEAKER_00: Colorado, Utah,
[8:31] SPEAKER_00: Wyoming, Idaho,
[8:33] SPEAKER_00: Washington,
[8:34] SPEAKER_00: California, Oregon,
[8:36] SPEAKER_00: Arizona, Kansas,
[8:38] SPEAKER_00: Alaska Territory,
[8:39] SPEAKER_00: Montana, and Nevada recognized women's right to vote in at least some elections.
[8:47] SPEAKER_00: Suffragists recognized that action at the federal level would be more effective than
[8:52] SPEAKER_00: a state-by-state strategy.
[8:55] SPEAKER_00: The day before Democratic President Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated in 1913,
[9:00] SPEAKER_00: they organized a suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. that grabbed media attention.
[9:07] SPEAKER_00: They continued civil disobedience to pressure Wilson into supporting their movement.
[9:13] SPEAKER_00: Still, it took another war effort,
[9:16] SPEAKER_00: that of World War I,
[9:17] SPEAKER_00: which the U.S.
[9:18] SPEAKER_00: entered in 1917,
[9:20] SPEAKER_00: to light a fire under the lawmakers whose votes would be necessary to get
[9:25] SPEAKER_00: a suffrage amendment through Congress and send it off to the states
[9:28] SPEAKER_00: for ratification.
[9:30] SPEAKER_00: Wilson, finally on board as he faced a difficult midterm election in 1918,
[9:37] SPEAKER_00: backed a constitutional amendment,
[9:39] SPEAKER_00: asking congressmen,
[9:41] SPEAKER_00: shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil,
[9:47] SPEAKER_00: and not to a partnership of privilege and right?
[9:51] SPEAKER_00: Congress passed the measure in a special session on June 4, 1919,
[9:57] SPEAKER_00: and Tennessee's ratification on August 18, 1920,
[10:01] SPEAKER_00: made it the law of the land as soon as the official notice was in the hands of
[10:06] SPEAKER_00: the Secretary of State.
[10:08] SPEAKER_00: 26 million American women had the right to vote in the 1920 presidential election.
[10:16] SPEAKER_00: Crucially,
[10:17] SPEAKER_00: as the black suffragists had known all too well when they found themselves caught
[10:22] SPEAKER_00: between the drives for black male voting and women's suffrage,
[10:26] SPEAKER_00: Jim Crow and Juan Crow laws meant that most black women and women
[10:30] SPEAKER_00: of color would remain unable to vote for another 45 years.
[10:36] SPEAKER_00: And yet, they never stopped fighting for that right.
[10:39] SPEAKER_00: Women like Fannie Lou Hamer,
[10:41] SPEAKER_00: Amelia Boynton,
[10:42] SPEAKER_00: Rosa Parks,
[10:43] SPEAKER_00: Viola Liuzzo,
[10:45] SPEAKER_00: and Constance Baker Motley were key organizers of voting rights initiatives,
[10:50] SPEAKER_00: spreading information,
[10:52] SPEAKER_00: arranging marches, sparking key protests, and preparing legal cases.
[10:58] SPEAKER_00: They were some of the leading voices behind the 1965 Voting Rights Act
[11:03] SPEAKER_00: that finally made black voting a reality.
[11:08] SPEAKER_00: Now, in 2026,
[11:11] SPEAKER_00: Christian nationalists,
[11:13] SPEAKER_00: whose ideas are powerful in the Trump administration,
[11:16] SPEAKER_00: want to repeal women's right to vote.
[11:20] SPEAKER_00: They say that voting should be by household and that women must defer to men.
[11:27] SPEAKER_00: It's a plan that seems designed to resurrect the world in which Americans lived
[11:33] SPEAKER_00: before August 18, 1920.

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