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The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the United States and its states from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex, in effect recognizing the right of women to vote. The amendment was the culmination of a decades-long movement for women's suffrage in the United States, at both the state and national levels, and was part of the worldwide movement towards women's suffrage and part of the wider women's rights movement. The first women's suffrage amendment was introduced in Congress in 1878. However, a suffrage amendment did not pass the House of Representatives until May 21, 1919, which was quickly followed by the Senate, on June 4, 1919. It was then submitted to the states for ratification, achieving the requisite 36 ratifications to secure adoption, and thereby go into effect, on August 18, 1920. The Nineteenth Amendment's adoption was certified on August 26, 1920.
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The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was an organization formed on February 18, 1890, to advocate in favor of women's suffrage in the United States. It was created by the merger of two existing organizations, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Its membership, which was about seven thousand at the time it was formed, eventually increased to two million, making it the largest voluntary organization in the nation. It played a pivotal role in the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which in 1920 guaranteed women's right to vote.
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin was a publisher, journalist, civil rights leader, suffragist, abolitionist, and editor of the Woman's Era, the first national newspaper published by and for African American women.
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Sadie L. Adams was an African-American teacher, suffragist, and clubwoman. She was one of the first women to serve on an election board in Chicago and one of the founders of the Douglas League of Women Voters. In 1916, she served as a delegate from Chicago's first black suffrage organization, the Alpha Suffrage Club, to the National Equal Rights League conference. She was elected president of the Chicago and Northern District Association of Colored Women's Clubs in 1921, serving into 1934. She was also involved in various charity clubs and organizations that helped to engage women in war work during World War I, provide resources for underserved youth, and increase suffrage for Black women.
Helen Appo Cook was a wealthy, prominent African-American community activist in Washington, D.C., and a leader in the women's club movement. Cook was a founder and president of the Colored Women's League, which consolidated with another organization in 1896 to become the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), an organization still active in the 21st century. Cook supported voting rights and was a member of the Niagara Movement, which opposed racial segregation and African American disenfranchisement. In 1898, Cook publicly rebuked Susan B. Anthony, president of the National Woman's Suffrage Association, and requested she support universal suffrage following Anthony's speech at a U.S. Congress House Committee on Judiciary hearing.
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Maude E. Craig Sampson Williams was an American suffragist, teacher, civil rights leader, and community activist in El Paso, Texas. In June 1918, she formed the El Paso Negro Woman's Civic and Equal Franchise League and requested membership in the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) through the Texas Equal Suffrage Association (TESA), but was denied. Williams organized African-American women to register and vote in the Texas Democratic Party primary in July 1918. She was one of the founders and a charter member of the El Paso chapter of the NAACP, which was the first chapter in the state of Texas. Williams served as the vice president of the El Paso chapter from 1917 to 1924 and remained active in the NAACP until her death. Williams played a significant role in the desegregation of Texas Western College in 1955, which was the first undergraduate college in Texas to be desegregated by a court order other than that of the Supreme Court of the United States. Midwestern University (now known as Midwestern State University was previously ordered to desegregate in 1954 by the SCOTUS immediately following the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
References
- ↑ Sterling, Dorothy, ed. (1984). We are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p. 442.
- 1 2 Garner, Karen (2001). "Equal Suffrage League". In Nina Mjagkij (ed.). Organizing Black America: an encyclopedia of African American associations. Taylor & Francis. p. 224. ISBN 0-8153-2309-3 . Retrieved 1 March 2010.
- 1 2 Mjagkij, Nina, ed. (2001). Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. p. 224.