19. Amendment to the United States Constitution

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The 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America (Women's Suffrage), 1920

The 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America was proposed by Congress on June 4, 1919 and added to the Constitution on August 18, 1920 . It was originally introduced in 1878 by Senator Aaron A. Sargent ; it was only submitted to the states for ratification 41 years later .

Until the 1910s, most states had denied women the right to vote. This 19th Amendment was the endpoint of the US women's suffrage movement, which had struggled to enforce suffrage at both state and national levels. Thus a judgment of the Supreme Court of 1875 ( Minor v. Happersett ) became obsolete, in which it had been decided unanimously that no right to vote for women could be derived from the 14th Amendment .

The approval of the state of Tennessee , which ratified it as the 36th state, was decisive for inclusion . Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the ratification on August 26, 1920. The amendment prohibits the federal government and states from banning a person from access to an election based on their gender.

text

"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."

“The right to vote for citizens of the United States must not be denied or restricted by the United States or any state on the basis of gender.
Congress has the power to enforce this amendment by law. "

prehistory

The United States Constitution of 1789 left the limits of the franchise undefined. Originally only the members of the House of Representatives were directly elected. The delimitation of the eligibility for this was expressly left to the individual states. Then and after that, states denied women the right to vote, with the exception of New Jersey, which abolished it in 1807.

Although some dispersed women's rights movements and organizations had existed before, the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 in New York State is traditionally seen as the prelude to the American women's rights movement. Women's suffrage, however, was not the focus of this gathering, and its advancement was minimal in the decades leading up to the Civil War . While legislative proposals on women's suffrage were tabled in most state legislatures during this period, they were usually ignored and only a few were voted on.

The women's rights movement became much stronger after the civil war during the Reconstruction period (1865–1877). During this time, the leaders of the women's rights movement pleaded for the adoption of universal suffrage as a civil right in the Reconstruction Amendment, i.e. the 13th , 14th and 15th Amendment to the American Constitution. Despite efforts, there has been no progress in women's suffrage.

In the case of a dispute, Minor v. Happersett , the Supreme Court ruled in 1875 that the privilege or immunity clauses of Amendment 14 did not protect or protect women from voting rights.

The continued settlement movement due to continued immigration and westward movement, together with the establishment of new states and constitutions, made it possible to keep the issue of women's rights on the agenda at the state level. Through the engagement of women's rights organizations and independent political parties, women's suffrage was enshrined in the new constitutions of the Wyoming Territory (1869), the State of Utah (1870) and the Washington Territory (1883). Existing state legislatures began considering electoral laws, and some even conducted voter polls. You were unsuccessful. Efforts at the national level continued, with a strategy of testimony to Congress, petitions and lobbying.

There had been several unsuccessful attempts to add general or limited women's suffrage to the constitution before the 19th Amendment was adopted. Two rival organizations, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), were established in 1869. The NWSA, led by suffragettes Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony , filed several unsuccessful lawsuits in the mid-1870s. Three decisions of the Supreme Court between 1873 and 1875 rejected their argumentation, which was based in combination on the 14th Amendment (granting general citizenship) and the 15th Amendment (granting the right to vote regardless of race). Therefore, these groups then introduced their own additional article on women's suffrage.

Unsuccessful submission of the 19th supplementary article

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (seated) and Susan B. Anthony (1900)

The 19th amendment is identical to the 15th ; the difference is that the 19th forbids the refusal of the right to vote because of gender, the 15th forbids it because of race, skin color or previous bondage. It is popularly referred to as the Anthony Amendment ; it was first proposed by Republican Senator Aaron A. Sargent of California. He was a staunch advocate of women's suffrage; he had met and made friends with Anthony on a train ride in 1872. He had already made several attempts to enshrine women's suffrage in law, but it was not until January 1878 that he formally submitted the proposal for the constitutional amendment. Stanton and other women testified before the Senate in support of the amendment. The proposal remained in a committee until it was dealt with by the entire Senate in 1887 and rejected in a 16:34 vote.

A thirty year period followed, known as The Doldrums , in which the amendment was not dealt with by Congress and the women's rights movement achieved few victories. During this period, the suffragettes were reluctant to achieve national recognition and turned more to the right to vote in different states and territories. Great activity began in 1910 and 1911 when there were surprising successes in Washington and California. In the years that followed, most western states passed laws or voter polls regarding full or partial women's suffrage. These successes were linked to the 1912 election, which saw the rise of the Progressive and Socialist parties as well as the election of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson . But it was not until 1914 that the constitutional amendment was dealt with again by the Senate, which also rejected it again.

Carrie Chapman Carr (1914)

Carrie Chapman Catt was a crucial "tool" in the final attempt to obtain ratification of the 19th Amendment. In 1900 she succeeded Susan B. Anthony as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), which was formed in 1890 from the merger of NWSA and AWSA . In 1915, she revived NAWSA and in 1917 led a successful campaign in New York to obtain state women's suffrage. When the US entered World War I, Carr decided, despite internal resistance, to support the war effort, against the widespread pacifist attitude within the organization. This service to the war made the women of NAWSA clearly visible symbols of nationalism.

This republican work by NAWSA contrasted with the more radical and aggressive tactics of the National Woman's Party (NWP), led by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns . The main goal of the NWP was the implementation of an amendment to the constitution to secure women's suffrage for all states. In 1917, the NWP held controversial demonstrations in Washington, DC to move attention away from the war to women's suffrage. A group called the Silent Sentinels protested outside the White House for eighteen months in 1917 to attract attention. Some women went to jail, some were mistreated and even force-fed when they went on hunger strikes. Wilson was accused of hypocrisy by the suffragettes because he fought for democracy and human rights abroad, but in the States denied women the amendment for equal suffrage. That was not good for Wilson's reputation as an international leader in the fight for democracy.

  • Alice Paul (1915)

  • Protest posters against Wilson in front of the White House

  • Vigil in front of the White House

  • Vigil in front of the White House

  • Protest poster against Wilson

  • Lucy Burns in Occoquan Women's Prison in 1917

In parallel, Catt was successful in transforming NAWSA, completely separate from the NWP, into a patriotic organization; and she was probably rewarded when President Wilson spoke out in favor of women's suffrage in his State of the Union speech on January 9, 1918, before Congress.

One day later, on January 10, 1918, another submission of the additional article was made in the House of Representatives. It was passed with the required but narrow two-thirds majority of the House of Representatives . The proposal was then forwarded to the Senate for a resolution. Wilson also appealed to him, but on September 30, 1918, the vote did not reach the required majority because of two missing votes. On February 10, 1919 it was voted again and it was again missing one vote for success.

ratification

Speaker Frederick H. Gillett signing the constitutional charter on the amendment

In order to get the amendment passed in time for the 1920 general election, the President called Congress to a special session to re-introduce the bill. On May 21, 1919, it was passed with 42 votes more than necessary. On June 4, 1919, it was discussed in the Senate and, after a long discussion, approved with 56 votes in favor and 25 against. Within a few days, Illinois , Wisconsin , and Michigan ratified the amendment as their legislatures were in session.

Other states followed at regular intervals until the amendment was ratified by 35 of the necessary 36 states. There was much opposition to the amendment from the South Democrats. This trend continued in Tennessee, the last state required for ratification. He was also shown in the special session shortly before the ratification period expired. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee approved the amendment by a narrow majority: 50 out of 99 MPs who voted yes. This was the last necessary state ratification necessary for the addition of the amendment to the constitution. Even today, this amendment is commonly known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.

Verdict in the case of "readers versus Garnett"

The validity of the additional article was determined in the reader v. Garnett upheld unanimously before the Supreme Court. Oscar Readers had sued against the registration of two women as voters in Baltimore , Maryland , because the Maryland Constitution only allowed male suffrage and Maryland Parliament had refused to ratify the 19th Amendment. Two months earlier, on August 26, 1920, the federal government announced that this additional article had been inserted into the constitution.

The Supreme Court dismissed the suit because a sufficient number of states had ratified it, allowing the two women to register as voters in Baltimore.

Effects

After the 19th Amendment was passed, many politicians feared that there might be a powerful “women’s bloc” in American politics. Because of that, there were laws like the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921, which expanded maternity benefits during the 1920s. But no such women's block emerged until the 1950s.

In 1920, only 36 percent of eligible women voted, compared to 68 percent of men. The low turnout was partly due to the remaining hurdles of the right to vote: proof of reading ability, proof of sufficiently long residence and tax payments. In some cases, many of the women also believed that it was inappropriate for them to vote - and many still had too little experience with it.

Commemoration

On August 26, 2016, a memorial was unveiled in Centennial Park, Nashville, commemorating Tennessee's role in delivering the 36th state ratification of the 19th Amendment.

See also

literature

  • Amar Akhil Reed: America's Constitution: A Biography . Random House, New York 2005, ISBN 0-8129-7272-4 .
  • Jean H. Baker (Ed.): Votes for Women: The Struggle for Suffrage Revisited . Oxford University Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-19-802983-0 .
  • Lee Ann Banaszak: Why Movements Succeed or Fail: Opportunity, Culture, and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage . Princeton University Press, Princeton 1996, ISBN 1-4008-2207-6 .
  • Ellen Carol DuBois: Woman Suffrage & Women's Rights . NYU Press, New York 1998, ISBN 0-8147-1900-7 .
  • Eleanor Flexner: Century of Struggle . Belknap Press of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 2000, ISBN 0-674-10653-9 .
  • Rebecca J. Mead, How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868-1914 . NYU Press, New York 2004, ISBN 0-8147-5676-X .
  • Christine Stansell: The Feminist Promise . The Modern Library, New York 2011, ISBN 978-1-58836-916-1 .
  • Sara M. Evans: Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America. The Free Press, New York: 1989, ISBN 0-02-902990-2 .

Web links

Wikisource: Text of the additional article  - sources and full texts
Wikisource: Text of the additional article  - sources and full texts (English)
Commons : Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lee A. Banaszak: Why Movements Succeed or Fail: Opportunity, Culture, and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage . Princeton University Press, 1996, pp. 5/6 .
  2. ^ Lee A. Banaszak: Why Movements Succeed or Fail: Opportunity, Culture, and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage . Princeton University Press, 1996, pp. 7 .
  3. ↑ Rebecca J. Mead: How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868-1914 . NYU Press, 2004, pp. 4 .
  4. ↑ process "Minor against Happersett" before the Supreme Court accessed on 25 October 2018th
  5. ↑ Rebecca J. Mead: How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868-1914 . NYU Press, 2004, pp. 2 .
  6. ^ Lee A. Banaszak: Why Movements Succeed or Fail: Opportunity, Culture, and the Struggle for Woman Suffrage . Princeton University Press, 1996, pp. 6/7 .
  7. ↑ Rebecca J. Mead: How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868-1914 . NYU Press, 2004, pp. 35-38 .
  8. ↑ Rebecca J. Mead: How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868-1914 . NYU Press, 2004, pp. 38 .
  9. ^ Sara M. Evans: Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America. The Free Press, New York 1989, pp. 164-172.
  10. ↑ a b Christine Stansell. The Feminist Promise. The Modern Library, New York 2011, pp. 171-174.
  11. ↑ Susan Vahabzadeh: Proudly Condemned. Trump pardons suffragettes. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung No. 191, August 20, 2020, p. 8.
  12. ^ Case "Readers versus Garnett", accessed on October 25, 2018.
  13. ↑ Report with picture about the monument , accessed on October 25, 2018.