How Women Won the Vote: A 19th Amendment Reading List

The process varied by state, with some making accommodations for the new voting bloc and others creating additional obstacles.

A century after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, it’s worth remembering why suffragists had to fight so hard, and who was fighting against them.

The material history of the movement reveals many of its priorities and problems, and its relevance to the persisting struggles for equal rights today.

This leading suffragist devoted her life to the movement but never got to vote—legally at least.

Racism and sexism were bound together in the fight to vote—and Black women made it clear they would never cede the question of their voting rights to others.

The anti-suffragist women would become a nationwide force that would influence later generations of conservative women. And today, a century after women gained the right to vote, echoes of their message remain.

The aftermath of the 1918 flu pandemic led to unexpected social changes, opened up new opportunities for women and irreversibly transformed life in the United States.

“Would you rather have a vote than a husband?”

The 19th Amendment did not bring the right to vote to all Native women, but two experts in a conversation said it did usher in the possibility of change.

On the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, trace the route of the national women’s suffrage movement and stand in the spots where history happened.

The women who remain locked out of the right to vote are the fractured legacy of a fractured movement.