Hard-Fought Ratification Campaigns in the States (Historical Marker)

Here follows the inscription written on this roadside historical marker:

Hard-Fought Ratification Campaigns in the States, 1919-1920
"The Woman Suffrage Amendment granted the largest single extension of suffrage ever made by a government not in the throes of a revolution."
Maud Wood Park, lead lobbyist for the National American Woman Suffrage Association

Pro- and Anti-Ratification Forces Waged Urgent Campaigns
After Congress sent the amendment to the states, NAWSA, the National Woman's Party, and other supporting organizations mounted ratification campaigns. Each sent their own organizers. Opponents were not far behind. In southern states Colored women voter leagues were created to get around laws already in effect to prevent Black men from voting.

Tennessee Became the Final State to Ratify
Amending the United States Constitution required approval by 36 of the 48 states. Tennessee was deemed the most likely 35th and final state, referred to as "The Perfect 36." After a bitterly contested campaign, the Tennessee legislature ratified the amendment in a special session. Delegate Harry Burn, who had received a letter from his mother urging him to support the ratification, cast the vote clinching the final victory. The amendment became part of the Constitution on August 26, 1920.

Victory at Last!
Women celebrated their hard-won suffrage victory with the ringing of church bells, parades, and public celebrations nationwide. The 19th Amendment prohibited sex discrimination in voting rights; thus, women entered the US Constitution for the first time. However, male lawmakers continued to deny citizenship to Native Americans and some immigrant groups and blocked most southern Black citizens from voting.

Victories Required Grit and Determination
The drive for women suffrage was a long and tedious process to educate the public and male politicians. Throughout the struggle, the grit and determination of suffragists to win despite opposition and repeated defeats, remains one of the most remarkable chapters in US history.

[Sidebar:]
Dates of State Ratification
Note: By the time Congress passed the 19th Amendment, women had won full suffrage in 15 states and partial suffrage in another 15.

1919
June
10 Wisconsin
10 Illinois (reaffirmed on June 17)
10 Michigan
16 Kansas
16 New York
16 Ohio
24 Pennsylvania
25 Massachusetts
28 Texas
July
2 Iowa
3 Missouri
28 Arkansas Aug
2 Montana
2 Nebraska
Sep
8 Minnesota
10 New Hampshire
Oct
2 Utah
Nov
1 California
5 Maine
Dec
1 North Dakota
4 South Dakota
15 Colorado

1920
Jan
6 Kentucky
6 Rhode Island
13 Oregon
16 Indiana
27 Wyoming
Feb
7 Nevada
9 New Jersey
11 Idaho
12 Arizona
21 New Mexico
28 Oklahoma
Mar
10 West Virginia
22 Washignton
Aug
18 Tennessee (Adopted Aug 26)

36th and final required vote reached in 441 days.

Note: Women in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Scandinavia and Europe had won the vote by 1919.

[Captions:]
Carrie Chapman Catt with flowers given by NAWSA members on her victorious return to New York.

Lobbying legislators for the 19th Amendment in Tennessee.

Alice Paul unfurling the "Ratification Banner" in victory, Washington, D.C.

"Any Good Suffragist the Morning After," cartoon from The Suffragist

The Continued Struggle for Voting Rights, 1920 - 2020
"The first disenfranchised class in history who, unaided by any political party, won enfranchisement by its own effort alone, and achieved the victory without the shedding of a drop of human blood."
Harriot Stanton Blatch, after the suffrage amendment was proclaimed

National American Woman Suffrage Association Became the League of Women Voters, 1920
In 1920 suffragists led by Carrie Chapman Catt transformed the NAWSA into the League of Women Voters to inform and educate new women voters. The League encouraged women to vote in the 1920 presidential election, and in every following election. State and local Leagues educated voters, including men after 1972, and advocated for political reforms.

African, Latino, Native and Asian Americans Fought Barriers to Voting
Because of existing federal and state laws, many women were still kept from voting in 1920, and those laws took years to change. African American women and men in southern states faced racism in the form of poll taxes, literacy tests, and other discriminatory practices. The civil rights movement of the 1960s used tactics pioneered by the suffragists to help win enactment of the Voting Rights Acts of 1965 and 1975. These laws removed many barriers, but enforcement was significantly undermined by the United States Supreme Court in 2013. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 made Native Americans citizens. However, they still had to obtain the right to vote state by state, the last in 1962. Like Black citizens, they faced many obstacles. Asian immigrants could finally become citizens and therefore eligible to vote due to the Immigration and Nationalization Act of 1952, but it contained strict immigration quotas. All immigration discrimination on the bases of national origin ended by 1965.

Barriers to Voting Rights Continued
The struggle to broaden the right to vote has occurred throughout US history — and it continues today. Many Americans, especially Black, Native, and Latino communities, immigrants, the young, and the economically disadvantaged, face challenges in exercising their right to vote. The suffragists proved that with courage and persistence, barriers to voting can be removed. After the 19th Amendment became law, women were able to use their vote and their voice to fight for justice. The fight for equality is not over.

[Captions:]
Women exercising their new right to vote.

League of Women Voters members hard at work.

Civil rights marches were a strategy pioneered by the suffrage movement.

Erected 2021 by Turning Point Suffragist Memorial Association. (Marker Number 17/18.)