Women of the Republic

Nina Allender, "Victory," The Suffragist, June 21, 1919

The passage of the Nineteenth Amendment was not inevitable.

The utmost effort of individual women and men was needed at every juncture. In September of 1918, President Wilson endorsed suffrage as a “wartime measure” which women had earned through “suffering and sacrifice.”

Despite the President’s vigorous lobbying, the amendment only succeeded in Congress after an election that shifted power from Wilson’s Democrats to pro-suffrage Republicans. Ratification fell to the states, with the decisive vote cast by a single representative in Tennessee on August 18, 1920.

This was a bittersweet victory for Maryland suffragists.

Though Edith Hooker raced across the state negotiating with legislators, they would not ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, and failed to do so until 1941.

Women's suffrage was stained by racial exclusion.

At best, Maryland’s white suffragists treated African American women as a charitable cause rather than as allies; at worst, they openly courted segregationists. Black women's struggle for the vote did not end with the Nineteenth Amendment; it continued through the Civil Rights era, and continues today.

Window sign, 1920

Propaganda poster, 1951

Women's work

In theory, the American electorate doubled in size when suffrage went into effect. However, changing social norms was a gradual process. The League of Women Voters and other groups registered thousands, increasing women’s share of the electorate until they surpassed men in the 1980s.

Until the protections of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, many African American women were blocked at the polls by spurious tests, taxes, and physical violence. Thanks to relentless organizing at local, state, and national levels, Black women today have the highest voter turnout rates of any demographic, yet they remain underrepresented in government.