Women were granted the right to vote in the United States with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in August 1920. The amendment legally guaranteed American women the right to vote, but it took several decades of agitation and protest to achieve this milestone. The campaign for womens suffrage began in the mid-19th century, and several generations of suffrage supporters worked tirelessly to achieve what many Americans considered a radical change of the Constitution. However, its worth noting that women in some states and localities had the right to vote in various elections before the passage of the 19th Amendment.
Its important to recognize that the 19th Amendment only gave white women the right to vote, and women of color faced discrimination and voter suppression for many years after its passage. The fight for true equality at the polls has been much more complex and fraught than some history books might make it seem. It wasnt until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that Black women, Indigenous women, Asian American women, and women from other racial and ethnic minority groups were afforded crucial protections to exercise their right to vote.
