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The Road to Women Voting
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First Convention
Seneca Falls, New York is the location for the first Women's Rights Convention. Elizabeth Cady Stanton writes "The Declaration of Sentiments" creating the agenda of women's activism for decades to come. -
Powerful Speech
At a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio, Sojourner Truth, a former slave, delivers her now memorable speech "Ain't I a woman? -
Powerless
Women delegates, Antoinette Brown and Susan B. Anthony, are not allowed to speak at The World's Temperance Convention held in New York City. -
Equal Rights
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony form the American Equal Rights Association, an organization dedicated to the goal of suffrage for all regardless of gender or race. -
Not Married
Many early suffrage supporters, including Susan B. Anthony, remained single because in the mid-1800s, married women could not own property in their own rights and could not make legal contracts on their own behalf. -
Radical
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony found the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), a more radical institution, to achieve the vote through a Constitutional amendment as well as push for other woman’s rights issues. NWSA was based in New York -
Conservative
Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe and other more conservative activists form the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) to work for woman suffrage through amending individual state constitutions. AWSA was based in Boston. -
Voting illegally
Susan B. Anthony casts her ballot for Ulysses S. Grant in the presidential election and is arrested and brought to trial in Rochester, New York. Fifteen other women are arrested for illegally voting. Sojourner Truth appears at a polling booth in Battle Creek, Michigan, demanding a ballot to vote; she is turned away. -
Declaration
Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage disrupt the official Centennial program at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, presenting a “Declaration of Rights for Women” to the Vice President. -
Amendment
A Woman Suffrage Amendment is proposed in the U.S. Congress. When the 19th Amendment passes forty-one years later, it is worded exactly the same as this 1878 Amendment. -
First Vote
The first vote on woman suffrage is taken in the Senate and is defeated. -
NAWSA
NWSA and AWSA merge and the National American Woman Suffrage Association is formed. Stanton is the first president. The Movement focuses efforts on securing suffrage at the state level. -
Convention
600,000 signatures are presented to the New York State Constitutional Convention in a failed effort to bring a woman suffrage amendment to the voters. -
Damage Control
Elizabeth Cady Stanton publishes The Woman’s Bible. After its publication, NAWSA moves to distance itself from Stanton because many conservative suffragists considered her to be too radical and, thus, potentially damaging to the suffrage campaign. -
First Parade
The Women’s Political Union organizes the first suffrage parade in New York City. -
Parade
Twenty thousand suffrage supporters join a New York City suffrage parade. -
National Women's Party
Alice Paul and Lucy Burns organize the Congressional Union, later known at the National Women’s Party (1916). They borrowed strategies from the radical Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) in England. -
Women support Suffrage
The National Federation of Women’s Clubs, which had over two million women members throughout the U.S., formally endorses the suffrage campaign. -
Parade
Forty thousand march in a NYC suffrage parade. Many women are dressed in white and carry placards with the names of the states they represent. -
Pickets at the White House
National Woman’s Party picketers appear in front of the White House holding two banners, “Mr. President, What Will You Do For Woman Suffrage?” and “How Long Must Women Wait for Liberty?” Picketers remain stationed there permanently. -
Solitary Confinement
Alice Paul, leader of the National Woman’s Party, was put in solitary confinement in the mental ward of the prison as a way to “break” her will and to undermine her credibility with the public. -
Arrests
In June, arrests of the National Woman’s party picketers begin on charges of obstructing sidewalk traffic. Subsequent picketers are sentenced to up to six months in jail. In November, the government unconditionally releases the picketers in response to public outcry and an inability to stop National Woman’s Party picketers’ hunger strike. -
President supports Suffrage
President Woodrow Wilson states his support for a federal woman suffrage amendment. -
Ratification Process
The Senate finally passes the Nineteenth Amendment and the ratification process begins. -
American Women win full Voting Rights
Three quarters of the state legislatures ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.
