How did the suffragists use federalism to secure the right to vote for women?
About this video
The speaker explains that before the 19th Amendment, many states, mostly in the West, had already given women the vote. Wyoming did so first while still a territory, and when Congress hinted it should drop women's suffrage to become a state, Wyoming's legislators refused. By the time of the 19th Amendment, most states allowed women to vote at least in some elections.
You'll be able to
- explain how states extended voting rights to women before the 19th Amendment.
- describe Wyoming's role and its stand when seeking statehood.
- describe the mix of full, partial and no suffrage across states before 1920.
Key words
- 19th Amendment
- The constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote nationwide.
- territory
- An area governed by the United States that is not yet a state.
- suffragist
- A person who campaigned for women's right to vote.
Transcript
It took a lot of work by a lot of dedicated people to get the 19th Amendment in place but let me put your mind to rest just a little bit. It's not quite as bad as it sounds on the surface, because many states had already granted women the right to vote. The first such state was actually not yet a state when it did so. It was the Wyoming territory. It tended to be the states out West that gave women the right to vote first. But with Wyoming, it was especially interesting because when they first petitioned for the right to be a state, Members of Congress were very worried that like Wyoming, unlike any other place that they were familiar with, had women who had the right to vote. Members of Congress cabled to the Wyoming Legislature, Gee, it would be a lot easier to admit you to the Union as a state if you left the women out. Oh boy, the Wyoming legislators, they wired back to Washington that they would rather be left out of
the Union for 100 years than to come into the Union without the women. Eventually, Congress relented and allowed Wyoming to enter the Union, even though women were able to vote, and that was considered to be such a new thing. But there were other Western states. By the time the 19th Amendment was adopted, most states actually did allow women to vote at least on some things. There were quite a few states that allowed women to vote on everything.
Then there were some that allowed women to vote only on certain things, like municipal elections, but there were still a number of states that didn't allow women to vote at all.
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