On This Day...

There were several important things that happened on this day. Henry Ford completed his first automobile. The first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded. It's Dr. Ruth's birthday (did you know she was once a sniper?).

But let's focus on an important civil rights milestone - on this day in 1919, Congress passed the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote.

The United States Constitution, adopted in 1789, left the boundaries of suffrage undefined. The only directly elected body created under the original Constitution was the U.S. House of Representatives, for which voter qualifications were explicitly delegated to the individual states. While women had the right to vote in several of the early colonies in what would become the United States, after 1776, with the exception of New Jersey, all states adopted constitutions that denied voting rights to women. New Jersey's constitution initially granted suffrage to property-holding residents, including single and married women, but the state rescinded women's voting rights in 1807 and did not restore them until New Jersey ratified the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.

During the Reconstruction era, women's rights leaders advocated for inclusion of universal suffrage as a civil right in the Reconstruction Amendments (the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments). Despite their efforts, these amendments did nothing to promote women's suffrage.

The National Women's Suffrage Association, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, attempted several unsuccessful court challenges in the mid-1870s. Their legal argument contended that the Fourteenth Amendment (granting universal citizenship) and Fifteenth Amendment (granting the vote irrespective of race) together guaranteed voting rights to women. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected this argument. In Bradwell v. Illinois, 83 U.S. 130 (1873), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Supreme Court of Illinois's refusal to grant Myra Bradwell a license to practice law was not a violation of the U.S. Constitution and refused to extend federal authority in support of women's citizenship rights. In Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1874), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not provide voting rights to U.S. citizens; it only guaranteed additional protection of privileges to citizens who already had them. If a state constitution limited suffrage to male citizens of the United States, then women in that state did not have voting rights.

Western territories led the way, with Wyoming guaranteeing women's suffrage in 1890 and Idaho in 1896. Beginning with Washington in 1910, seven more western states quickly passed women's suffrage legislation, including California in 1911, Oregon, Arizona, and Kansas in 1912, Alaska in 1913, and Montana and Nevada in 1914.

A federal amendment intended to grant women the right to vote was introduced in the U.S. Senate for the first time in 1878 by A.A. Sargent, the senator from California. Sargent, who had met and befriended Anthony on a train ride in 1872, was a dedicated women's suffrage advocate. Stanton and other women testified before the Senate in support of the amendment. The proposal sat in a committee until it was considered by the full Senate and rejected in a 16-to-34 vote in 1887.

In 1900, Carrie Chapman Catt succeeded Susan B. Anthony as the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Catt revitalized NAWSA, turning the focus of the organization to the passage of the federal amendment while simultaneously supporting women who wanted to pressure their states to pass suffrage legislation. The strategy, which she later called "The Winning Plan", had several goals: women in states that had already granted presidential suffrage would focus on passing a federal suffrage amendment; women who believed they could influence their state legislatures would focus on amending their state constitutions and Southern states would focus on gaining primary suffrage (the right to vote in state primaries). Simultaneously, the NAWSA worked to elect congressmen who supported suffrage for women. By 1915, NAWSA was a large, powerful organization, with 44 state chapters and over 2 million members.

In 1914 the constitutional amendment proposed by Sargent, which was nicknamed the "Susan B. Anthony Amendment", was once again considered by the Senate, where it was again rejected. In April 1917 the "Anthony Amendment," which eventually became the Nineteenth Amendment, was reintroduced in the U.S. House and Senate. Women began picketing outside the White House, and were nicknamed the "Silent Sentinels." On July 4, 1917, police arrested 168 of the protesters, who were sent to prison in Lorton, Virginia. Some of these women, including Lucy Burns and Alice Paul, went on hunger strikes; some were force fed while others were otherwise harshly treated by prison guards. The release of the women a few months later was largely due to increasing public pressure.

In 1918, President Wilson faced a difficult midterm election and would have to confront the issue of women's suffrage directly. Fifteen states had extended equal voting rights to women and, by this time, the President fully supported the federal amendment. A proposal brought before the House in January 1918 passed by one. The vote was then carried into the Senate where Wilson made an appeal on the Senate floor, an unprecedented action at the time. In a short speech, the President tied women's right to vote directly to the war, asking, "Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right? On September 30, 1918, the proposal fell two votes short of passage, prompting the radical National Women's Party to direct campaigning to senators who had voted against the amendment.

Between January 1918 and June 1919, the House and Senate voted on the federal amendment five times. Each vote was extremely close and Southern Democrats continued to oppose giving women—especially African-American women—the vote. Suffragists pressured Wilson to call a special session of Congress and he agreed to schedule one for May 19, 1919. On May 21, 1919, the amendment passed the House 304 to 89, with 42 votes more than was necessary. On June 4, 1919, it was brought before the Senate and, after Southern Democrats abandoned a filibuster, 37 Republican senators joined 19 Democrats to pass the amendment with 56 to 25.

Within a few days, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan ratified the amendment, their legislatures being then in session. By July, Montana, Arkansas, and Nebraska had approved ratification. In other states support proved more difficult to secure. Much of the opposition to the amendment came from Southern Democrats; only one southern state (Texas) and four border states had voted for ratification. Alabama and Georgia were the first states to defeat ratification. The governor of Louisiana worked to organize 13 states to resist ratifying the amendment. The Maryland legislature refused to ratify the amendment and attempted to prevent other states from doing so. Carrie Catt began appealing to Western governors, encouraging them to act swiftly. By the end of 1919, a total of 22 states had ratified the amendment.

By June, 1920, after intense lobbying by both the NAWSA and the NWP, the amendment was ratified by 35 of the necessary 36 state legislatures. Ratification would be determined by Tennessee. In the middle of July, 1919, both opponents and supporters of the Anthony Amendment arrived in Nashville to lobby the General Assembly. Carrie Catt, representing the NAWSA, worked with state suffragist leaders, including Anne Dallas Dudley and Abby Crawford Milton. Sue Shelton White, a Tennessee native who had participated in protests at the White House, represented the NWP. Opposing them were the "Antis", in particular, Josephine Pearson, state president of the Southern Women's Rejection League of the Susan. B. Anthony Amendment, who had served as dean and chair of philosophy at Christian College in Columbia. Pearson was assisted by Anne Pleasant, president of the Louisiana Women's Rejection League and the wife of a former Louisiana governor. Especially in the South, the question of women's suffrage was closely tied to issues of race. While both white and African-American women worked toward women's suffrage, some white suffragists tried to appease southern states by arguing that votes for women could counter the black vote, strengthening white supremacy. For the anti-suffragists in the south, the federal amendment was viewed as a "Force Bill", one that Congress could use to enforce voting provisions not only for women, but for African-American men who were still effectively disenfranchised even after passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

Prior to the start of the General Assembly session on August 9, both supporters and opponents had lobbied members of the Tennessee Senate and House of Representatives. Though the Democratic governor of Tennessee, Albert H. Roberts, supported ratification, most lawmakers were still undecided. Anti-suffragists targeted members, meeting their trains as they arrived in Nashville to make their case. When the General Assembly convened on August 9, both supporters and opponents set up stations outside of chambers, handing out yellow roses to suffrage supporters and red roses to the "Antis". On August 12, the legislature held hearings on the suffrage proposal; the next day the Senate voted 24-5 in favor of ratification. As the House prepared to take up the issue of ratification on August 18, lobbying intensified. House Speaker Seth M. Walker attempted to table the ratification resolution, but was defeated twice, with a vote of 48-48. The vote on the resolution would be close. Representative Harry Burn, a Republican, had voted to table the resolution both times. When the vote was held again, Burn voted yes. The 24-year-old claimed he supported women's suffrage as a "moral right", but had voted against it because he believed his constituents opposed it. In the final minutes before the vote, he received a note from his mother, urging him to vote yes.

The same day that ratification passed in the General Assembly, Speaker Walker filed a motion to reconsider. When it became clear that he did not have enough votes to carry the motion, representatives opposing suffrage boarded a train, fleeing Nashville for Decatur, Alabama to block the House from taking action on the reconsideration motion by preventing a quorum. Thirty-seven legislators fled to Decatur, issuing a statement that ratifying the amendment would violate their oath to defend the state constitution.[46] The ploy failed and when the House reconvened to take the final procedural steps that would reaffirm ratification, Tennessee suffragists sat at the desks of the missing Anti delegates.[47]

On August 18, 1920, Tennessee narrowly approved the Nineteenth Amendment, with 50 of 99 members of the Tennessee House of Representatives voting yes. Upon signing the ratification certificate, the Governor of Tennessee sent it by registered mail to the U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, whose office received it at 4:00 a.m. on August 26, 1920. Once certified as correct, Bainbridge signed the Proclamation of the Women's Suffrage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, making the Nineteenth Amendment officially law as of that date.This provided the final ratification necessary to add the amendment to the Constitution, making the United States the twenty-seventh country in the world to give women the right to vote.

The Equal Rights Amendment was first proposed by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman and introduced in Congress in 1923. It finally passed in 1972 . It was vigorously opposed by groups and individuals similar to those who had opposed the 19th Amendment, primarily led by Anita Bryant and Phyllis Schlafly, in the early days of Movement Conservatism that has led us to Donald Trump, who mobilized conservatives against the amendment. Defeating the ERA and overturning Roe v. Wade were the original motivating principles of Movement Conservatives. They have almost arrived.I remember loud shouting matches about unisex public restrooms. Apparently, the idea of a stall escapes the conservative brain. Mention a right to privacy and their heads would explode because that way lies abortion.

Although the deadline for ratification has expired, a movement exists to gain ratification from three more states, and then have Congress change the deadline. A similar situation happened with the 27th Amendment, first proposed by James Madison, which sat around for 202 years before being ratified.

We'll see.