About
The women's suffrage movement in the United States — the organized campaign for women's right to vote — spanned 72 years from the Seneca Falls Convention (1848, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott) to the 19th Amendment's ratification (1920). The movement involved thousands of activists, hundreds of confrontations, years of imprisonment, hunger strikes, and force-feeding, and ultimately succeeded through a combination of moral argument, strategic campaigning, and exhausting patience.
Key figures: Susan B. Anthony (arrested for voting illegally in 1872, fined $100 she never paid); Sojourner Truth ('Ain't I a Woman?' 1851); Alice Paul (picketed the White House, imprisoned, force-fed during hunger strike); Ida B. Wells (Black suffragist who highlighted the movement's racial exclusions). Wyoming granted women the vote in 1869 (as a territory); New Zealand was the first country (1893); Britain passed a limited women's suffrage in 1918 and full suffrage in 1928. Saudi Arabia granted women the vote in 2015 — and women still cannot vote in Vatican City.
# Top 10 suffrage facts
- 1Seneca Falls 1848
- 2Susan B. Anthony (arrested 1872)
- 3Alice Paul (imprisoned, force-fed)
- 419th Amendment (1920)
- 5New Zealand first (1893)
- 6Wyoming first US territory (1869)
- 7Ida B. Wells
- 8WSPU in Britain (Emmeline Pankhurst)
- 9Saudi Arabia 2015
- 10Vatican City (still no women's vote)
Fascinating Facts
- ◆Susan B. Anthony was arrested, tried, and convicted in 1872 for voting in the presidential election — the judge directed the jury to find her guilty without deliberation, fined her $100, and she refused to pay it and was never imprisoned, denying her a Supreme Court appeal
- ◆Alice Paul and other suffragists picketing the White House in 1917 were arrested, imprisoned, and subjected to force-feeding during hunger strikes — generating so much public sympathy that it accelerated the final push for the 19th Amendment
- ◆The state of Tennessee provided the deciding vote for the 19th Amendment in 1920 — cast by Harry T. Burn, a 24-year-old legislator who changed his vote at the last minute after receiving a letter from his mother saying 'be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the Rat in Ratification'
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