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The Representation of the People Act 1918 saw British women over 30 gain the vote. Dutch women won the vote in 1919, and American women on August 26, 1920, with the passage of the 19th Amendment (the Voting Rights Act of 1965 secured voting rights for racial minorities).
Since the very first Indian general election held in 1951–52, universal suffrage for all adult citizens aged 21 or older was established under Article 326 of the Constitution of India. The minimum voting age was reduced to 18 years by the 61st Amendment, effective 28 March 1989.
First in the world
Although a number of other territories enfranchised women before 1893, New Zealand can justly claim to be the first self-governing country to grant the vote to all adult women.
Wyoming. On December 10, 1869, Territorial Governor John Allen Campbell signed an act of the Wyoming Territorial Legislature granting women the right to vote, the first U.S. state or territory to grant suffrage to women.
The Senate debated what came to be known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment periodically for more than four decades. Approved by the Senate on June 4, 1919, and ratified in August 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment marked one stage in women’s long fight for political equality.
Territories like Wyoming wanted more white settlers, so they figured they could bring more white women out by allowing them to vote. “Long story short, if they could get white women out here, white men would be more likely to settle down,” Scharff said. She added that these laws were exclusively aimed at white women.
The term has nothing to do with suffering but instead derives from the Latin word “suffragium,” meaning the right or privilege to vote. … During the woman suffrage movement in the United States, “suffragists” were anyone—male or female—who supported extending the right to vote (suffrage) to women.
The Snyder Act of 1924 admitted Native Americans born in the U.S. to full U.S. citizenship. Though the Fifteenth Amendment, passed in 1870, granted all U.S. citizens the right to vote regardless of race, it wasn’t until the Snyder Act that Native Americans could enjoy the rights granted by this amendment.
In 1756, Lydia Taft became the first legal woman voter in colonial America. This occurred under British rule in the Massachusetts Colony. In a New England town meeting in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, she voted on at least three occasions. Unmarried white women who owned property could vote in New Jersey from 1776 to 1807.
Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote. The 19th amendment legally guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle—victory took decades of agitation and protest.
Mississippi rejected the 19th Amendment on March 29, 1920. The state belatedly ratified the amendment on March 22, 1984.
Some women in Britain embraced the term suffragette, a way of reclaiming it from its original derogatory use. In the United States, however, the term suffragette was seen as an offensive term and not embraced by the suffrage movement.
It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. … This “act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution” was signed into law 95 years after the amendment was ratified.
Separately, in 1975 Congress expanded the Act’s scope to protect language minorities from voting discrimination. … Congress expanded Section 2 to explicitly ban any voting practice that had a discriminatory effect, irrespective of whether the practice was enacted or operated for a discriminatory purpose.
The March on Washington was a massive protest march that occurred in August 1963, when some 250,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Also known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the event aimed to draw attention to continuing challenges and inequalities faced by …
Acronyms (colloquial) | VRA |
Nicknames | Voting Rights Act |
Enacted by | the 89th United States Congress |
Effective | August 6, 1965 |
Citations |
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But on June 2, 1924, Congress granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the U.S. Yet even after the Indian Citizenship Act, some Native Americans weren’t allowed to vote because the right to vote was governed by state law. Until 1957, some states barred Native Americans from voting.
Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote.
He responded to attacks on his integrity and honor by inserting a personal statement into the House Journal, explaining his decision to cast the vote in part because “I knew that a mother’s advice is always safest for a boy to follow, and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.”
Description. Alice Paul, American women’s rights activist and suffragette, describes her hunger strike and subsequent force feeding in Holloway jail in this 1909 newspaper article. Paul sentenced to seven months in jail after being arrested for demonstrating at the Lord Mayor’s banquet in London.
The term refers in particular to members of the British Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), a women-only movement founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, which engaged in direct action and civil disobedience.
The final vote was 290–130 in the House of Representatives and 73–27 in the Senate. After the House agreed to a subsequent Senate amendment, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by President Johnson at the White House on July 2, 1964.
The proposed 26th Amendment passed the House and Senate in the spring of 1971 and was ratified by the states on July 1, 1971.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act created a significant change in the status of African Americans throughout the South. The Voting Rights Act prohibited the states from using literacy tests and other methods of excluding African Americans from voting.
1790s. The Naturalization Act of 1790 allows free white persons born outside of the United States to become citizens. However, due to the Constitution granting the states the power to set voting requirements, this Act (and its successor Naturalization Act of 1795) did not automatically grant the right to vote.
In 1964, Congress passed Public Law 88-352 (78 Stat. 241). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing.
The 1970 amendments included a nationwide ban on literacy tests and reduced residency requirements [link to tools of suppression] that could be applied in presidential elections. The 1970 reauthorization also reduced the voting age [link to AGE subpage] in national elections from 21 to 18 years of age.