Women's Suffrage

In 1848, at the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, delegates adopted a resolution calling for women's suffrage. But it would take seventy-two years before most American women could vote. Why did it take so long? Why did significant numbers of women oppose women's suffrage?

The Constitution speaks of "persons"; only rarely does the document use the word "he." The Constitution did not explicitly exclude women from congress or from the presidency or from juries or from voting. The Fourteenth Amendment included a clause that stated, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."

In the presidential election of 1872, supporters of woman suffrage, including Susan B. Anthony, appeared at the polls, arguing that if all citizens had the right to the privileges of citizenship, they could certainly exercise the right to vote. In Minor v. Happersett (1875) the Supreme Court ruled that women could only receive the vote as a result of explicit legislation or constitutional amendment, rather than through interpretation of the implications of the Constitution. In a unanimous opinion, the Court observed that it was "too late" to claim the right of suffrage by implication. It also ruled that suffrage was a matter for the states, not the federal government, to decide.

One group of women led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony sought a constitutional amendment. Another group, led by Lucy Stone, favored a state-by-state approach. In 1890, the two groups merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Rather than arguing in favor of equal rights, the NAWSA initially argued that women would serve to uplift politics and counterbalance the votes of immigrants. Meanwhile, opponents of women's suffrage argued that it would increase family strife, erode the boundaries between masculinity and femininity, and degrade women by exposing them to the corrupt world of politics.

Women succeeded in getting the vote slowly. Wyoming Territory, eager to increase its population, enfranchised women in 1869, followed by Utah, which wanted to counter the increase in non-Mormon voters. Idaho and Colorado also extended the vote to women in the mid-1890s. A number of states, counties, and cities allowed women to vote in municipal elections, for school boards or for other educational issues, and on liquor licenses.

During the early twentieth century, the suffrage movement became better financed and more militant. It attracted growing support from women who favored reforms to help children (such as increased spending on education) and the prohibition of alcohol. It also attracted growing numbers of working-class women, who viewed politics as the way to improve their wages and working conditions.

World War I helped to fuel support for the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, extending the vote to women. Most suffragists strongly supported the war effort by selling war bonds and making clothing for the troops. In addition, women's suffrage seemed an effective way to demonstrate that the war truly was a war for democracy.

At first, politicians responded to the Nineteenth Amendment by increasingly favoring issues believed to be of interest to women, such as education and disarmament. But as it became clear that women did not vote as a bloc, politicians became less interested in addressing issues of particular interest to them. It would not be until the late twentieth century that a gender gap in voting would become a major issue in American politics.

Declining Participation in Elections

Voter turnout began to fall after the election of 1896. Participation in presidential elections fell from a high of about eighty percent overall to about sixty percent in the North in the 1920s and about twenty percent in the South. Contributing to the decline in voter participation was single-party dominance in large parts of the country; laws making it difficult for third parties to appear on the ballot; the decline of urban political machines; the rise of at-large municipal elections; and the development of appointed commissions that administered water, utilities, police, and transportation, reducing the authority of elected officials.

Voting Rights for African-Americans

In 1944, in Smith v. Allwright, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Texas's Democratic party could not restrict membership to whites only and bar blacks from voting in the party's primary. Between 1940 and 1947, the proportion of Southern blacks registered to vote rose from three percent to twelve percent. In 1946, a presidentially appointed National Committee on Civil Rights called for abolition of poll taxes and for federal action to protect the voting rights of African-Americans and Native Americans.

At the end of the 1950s, seven Southern states (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina South Carolina, and Virginia) used literacy tests to keep blacks from voting, while five states (Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia) used poll taxes to prevent blacks from registering. In Alabama, voters had to provide written answers to a twenty-page test on the Constitution and on state and local government. Questions included: "Where do presidential electors cast ballots for president?" And "Name the rights a person has after he has been indicted by a grand jury." The Civil Rights Act of 1957 allowed the Justice Department to seek injunctions and file suits in voting rights cases, but it only increased black voting registrations by 200,000.

In an effort to bring the issue of voting rights to national attention, Martin Luther King, Jr., launched a voter registration drive in Selma, Alabama, in early 1965. Even though blacks slightly outnumbered whites in this city of 29,500 people, Selma's voting rolls were ninety-nine percent white and one percent black. For seven weeks, King led hundreds of Selma's black residents to the county courthouse to register to vote. Nearly 2,000 black demonstrators, including King, were jailed by County Sheriff James Clark for contempt of court, juvenile delinquency, and parading without a permit. After a federal court ordered Clark not to interfere with orderly registration, the sheriff forced black applicants to stand in line for up to five hours before being permitted to take a "literacy" test. Not a single black voter was added to the registration rolls.

When a young black man was murdered in nearby Marion, King responded by calling for a march from Selma to the state capitol of Montgomery, fifty miles away. On March 7, 1965, black voting-rights demonstrators prepared to march. As they crossed a bridge spanning the Alabama River, 200 state police with tear gas, nightsticks, and whips attacked them. The march resumed on March 21 with federal protection. The marchers chanted, "Segregation's got to fall ... you never can jail us all.'' On March 25, a crowd of 25,000 gathered at the state capitol to celebrate the march's completion. Martin Luther King, Jr., addressed the crowd and called for an end to segregated schools, poverty, and voting discrimination. "I know you are asking today, 'How long will it take?' ... How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.''

Two measures adopted in 1965 helped safeguard the voting rights of black Americans. On January 23, the states completed ratification of the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the Constitution barring a poll tax in federal elections. At the time, five Southern states still had a poll tax. On August 6, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which prohibited literacy tests and sent federal examiners to seven Southern states to register black voters. Within a year, 450,000 Southern blacks registered to vote.

The Supreme Court ruled that literacy tests were illegal in areas where schools had been segregated, struck down laws restricting the vote to property-owners or tax-payers, and held that lengthy residence rules for voting were unconstitutional. The court also ruled in the "one-man, one-vote" Baker v. Carr decision that states could not give rural voters a disproportionate sway in state legislatures. Meanwhile, the states eliminated laws that disenfranchised paupers.

Reducing the Voting Age

The war in Vietnam fueled the notion that young people who were young enough to die for their country were old enough to vote. In 1970, as part of an extension of the Voting Rights Act, a provision was added lowering the voting age to eighteen. The Supreme Court ruled that Congress had the power to reduce the voting age only in federal elections, not in state elections. To prevent states from having to maintain two different voting rolls, the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution barred the states and the federal government from denying the vote to anyone eighteen or older.

An Unfinished History

The history of voting rights is not yet over. Even today, debate continues. One of the most heated debates is whether or not convicted felons who have served their time be allowed to vote. Today, a handful of states bar convicted felons from voting unless they successfully petition to have their voting rights restored. Another controversy -- currently being discussed in San Francisco -- is whether non-citizens should have the right to vote, for example, in local school board elections. Above all, the Electoral College arouses controversy, with critics arguing that our country's indirect system of electing a president overrepresents small states, distorts political campaigning, and thwarts the will of a majority of voters. History reminds us that even issues that seem settled sometimes reopen as subjects for debate. One example might be whether the voting age should be lowered again, perhaps to sixteen. In short, the debate about what it means to be a truly democratic society remains an ongoing, unfinished, story.