WEBVTT - How Did the Battle for the 19th Amendment Work? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:04.320 Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio, 0:00:06.240 --> 0:00:10.440 Hey brain Stuff, Lauren bob obam here. Sometimes it feels 0:00:10.480 --> 0:00:13.240 like the United States as a society has made major 0:00:13.320 --> 0:00:17.360 strides in the ongoing fight for gender equality, and sometimes 0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:20.360 reality rears its ugly head and you realize, well, the 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:23.040 country still has a long way to go. And the 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:26.320 truth is women continue to fight every day for equal rights. 0:00:26.480 --> 0:00:28.560 And it wasn't that long ago that the female portion 0:00:28.600 --> 0:00:31.560 of the population, which is roughly half of the United States, 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:36.080 was prohibited from participating in politics until the Nineteenth Amendment 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:40.200 changed that passed by Congress on June four of nineteen 0:00:40.280 --> 0:00:43.600 nineteen and ratified on August eighteenth of nineteen twenty, the 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:47.279 Nineteenth Amendment finally acknowledged women's right to vote in America. 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:51.199 For the article of this episode is based on How 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:55.040 Stuff Works. Spoke with Alison ka Lang, PhD, Assistant Professor 0:00:55.080 --> 0:00:58.480 of history at Boston's Wentworth Institute of Technology, an author 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:02.360 of picturing political power images in the women's suffrage movement. 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:06.560 She said the nineteenth Amendment prevented states from limiting the 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:10.120 right to vote based on sex. Women started voting in 0:01:10.160 --> 0:01:13.040 Wyoming in eighteen sixty nine, and won the vote in 0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:16.319 other states in later years, They could also often vote 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:19.280 in local city elections or school board elections before the 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:24.040 Nineteenth Amendment. Even so, the nineteenth Amendment was revolutionary because 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:28.000 it enfranchised more people than any other law in US history. 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:32.280 Well before the Civil War broke out, many women were 0:01:32.319 --> 0:01:35.000 beginning to push back against the idea that their role 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:39.320 was confined to managing the husband's home and family. Women 0:01:39.360 --> 0:01:42.680 were playing leading roles in reform groups, religious movements, and 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:47.280 anti slavery organizations. All of these actions helped redefine what 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:49.480 it meant to be a woman in the eighteen hundreds 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:53.960 in America, but the first real proposal for the idea 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:56.960 of women's suffrage as a goal, a suffrage meaning the 0:01:57.040 --> 0:02:00.520 right to vote, began at the Seneca Falls Convention, which 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:03.000 was the first women's right convention in the United States. 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:06.720 It was held in July eighteen forty eight in Seneca Falls, 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:10.519 New York. More than three hundred people, both men and women, attended, 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:14.840 including slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglas and leading women's right advocate 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:18.840 Elizabeth Katie Stanton, one of the meeting organizers. She kicked 0:02:18.840 --> 0:02:22.680 off the event with a rousing speech. She said, we 0:02:22.760 --> 0:02:26.040 are assembled to protest against a form of government existing 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:29.040 without the consent of the governed, to declare our right 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:32.000 to be free, as man is free, to be represented 0:02:32.040 --> 0:02:34.920 in the government which we are taxed to support, to 0:02:35.000 --> 0:02:37.960 have such disgraceful laws as give man the power to 0:02:38.080 --> 0:02:41.000 chastise and imprison his wife, to take the wages which 0:02:41.040 --> 0:02:43.920 she earns, the property which she inherits, and, in the 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:48.600 case of separation, the children of her love. The delegates 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:51.840 of the convention wrote a declaration of Sentiments modeled on 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:55.200 the u S Declaration of Independence, right down to this 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:58.240 line in the preamble, we hold these truths to be 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:01.840 self evident, that all men and women are created equal. 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:07.200 It included a list of eleven resolutions, the ninth encouraging 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:10.200 women quote to secure themselves their sacred right to the 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:14.120 elective franchise, that is, their right to vote. It was 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:17.760 by far the most controversial, even prompting many women's right 0:03:17.800 --> 0:03:21.880 supporters to pull their support, and it barely passed, but 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:25.160 it also became the foundation of the women's suffrage movement 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:30.040 going forward. In the years following, women of all ages 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:34.480 began writing about, marching for and practicing civil disbedience, sometimes 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:37.360 referring to the Declaration of Sentiments in an effort to 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:41.800 change the Constitution, which originally permitted only landowning white men 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:46.880 aged twenty one and older to vote. Lang said suffrage 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:49.400 was a popular term in the nineteenth century, and it 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:53.760 means the right to vote. Americans discussed male suffrage, female suffrage, 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:58.120 black suffrage, etcetera. Today, people often associate the term with 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:03.120 the women's voting rights movement. The Nineteenth Amendment was first 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:06.280 introduced in Congress in eighteen seventy eight, but it took 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:10.240 more than forty years of organizing, petitioning, picketing, and more 0:04:10.280 --> 0:04:14.400 to finally get ratified. Over the decades, different strategies were 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:17.560 employed to try to get the amendment passed, and some 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:20.599 attempted to get suffrage acts passed in each individual state. 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:25.080 The tactic worked to an extent. By nineteen twelve, nine 0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:29.840 western states had adopted women suffrage. Other advocates went to 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:33.480 court to challenge male only voting laws, and some suffragusts 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:37.680 organized and participated in parades, hunger strikes, and silent visuals. 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.400 Regardless of the type of action these supporters took, these 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:45.479 women almost invariably encountered countless forms of verbal and even 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:51.400 physical abuse. By nineteen sixteen, almost all the major suffrage 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:55.480 organizations formed a united front to pass a constitutional amendment. 0:04:56.240 --> 0:05:00.080 New York officially adopted women suffrage in nineteen seventeen, and 0:05:00.279 --> 0:05:03.600 a year later, President Woodrow Wilson changed his original position 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:07.520 on the matter and declared support for the amendment. Finally, 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:10.920 on May twenty one, nineteen nineteen, the House of Representatives 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:14.240 passed the amendment, and the Senate followed two weeks later. 0:05:15.320 --> 0:05:18.560 In nineteen twenty Tennessee became the thirty sixth state to 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:21.839 ratify the amendment, and with three fourths of the states 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:25.320 in agreement, the US was finally able to officially adopt 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:29.680 the new policy. The nineteenth Amendment states the rights of 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:32.000 citizens of the United States to vote shall not be 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:35.040 denied or abridged by the United States or by any 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:40.479 State on account of sex. But as impactful as the 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:44.880 Nineteenth Amendment was, it didn't end the struggle. Lang said 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:47.600 it's important to keep in mind that the Nineteenth Amendment 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:50.640 did not grant all women the right to vote. Many 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:53.520 poorer women and women of color were still subject to 0:05:53.560 --> 0:05:58.559 poll taxes. Literacy tests and other restrictive laws. American women 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:01.280 gained greater access to the pole through other laws like 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:04.960 the Indian Citizenship Act of nineteen, the repeal of the 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:08.520 Chinese Exclusion Act in ninety three, and the Voting Rights 0:06:08.560 --> 0:06:12.359 Act of nineteen. Puerto Rico granted women the vote in 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:17.160 nine so the Nineteenth Amendment opened up opportunities, but many 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:25.520 women still had to fight for the vote. Today's episode 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:27.520 is based on the article the Battle for the Nineteenth 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:30.320 Amendment and Women's right to Vote on how stuffworks dot Com, 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:33.680 written by Michell Konstantinovski. Brain Stuff is production of by 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:35.920 Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works dot Com, 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:39.039 and it's produced by Tyler Clay. Four more podcasts. My 0:06:39.080 --> 0:06:42.200 heart Radio was at the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:44.080 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.