Women, Voting, and the Nineteenth Amendment: A JAH Suffrage Reader

On August 18, 1920, the General Assembly of Tennessee—the requisite thirty-sixth state—ratified the Nineteenth Amendment. After decades of public activism, and more than a year of legislative debate, the amendment, which prohibited the denial or abridgement of the right of citizens to vote “on account of sex,” at last became part of the U.S. Constitution. Woman suffrage became a right—though not for all women a reality—throughout the nation.

To mark the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, and to encourage critical assessment of the broader histories of suffrage and suffrage restriction in the United States, the Journal of American History has assembled “Women, Voting, and the Nineteenth Amendment: A JAH Suffrage Reader.” This reader offers a sampling of numerous articles and reviews published in the JAH over the past half century. By no means exhaustive, it is intended to provide readers with a brief introduction to the history and historiography of woman suffrage, and women’s political activism more generally, in the United States. As part of our ongoing series Sex, Suffrage, Solidarities: Centennial Reappraisals, we hope that this reader will benefit students, educators, and researchers who wish to learn more about these topics. We invite all readers to revisit as well the JAH Women’s History Index, published in our March 2020 issue. 

The following articles and reviews will be freely available through November 30, 2020: 

Detail, Votes for Women: Song (1914). Library of Congress, Music Division.

The New Woman: Changing Views of Women in the 1920s (September 1974)

Estelle B Freedman

Journal of American History, Volume 61, Issue 2, September 1974, Pages 372–393, https://doi.org/10.2307/1903954

Leadership and Tactics in the American Woman Suffrage Movement: A New Perspective from Massachusetts (September 1975)

Sharon Hartman Strom

Journal of American History, Volume 62, Issue 2, September 1975, Pages 296–315, https://doi.org/10.2307/1903256

Feminist Politics in the 1920s: The National Woman’s Party (June 1984)

Nancy F Cott

in Journals

Journal of American History, Volume 71, Issue 1, June 1984, Pages 43–68, https://doi.org/10.2307/1899833

Working Women, Class Relations, and Suffrage Militance: Harriot Stanton Blatch and the New York Woman Suffrage Movement, 1894–1909 (June 1987)

Ellen Carol DuBois

in Journals

Journal of American History, Volume 74, Issue 1, June 1987, Pages 34–58, https://doi.org/10.2307/1908504

Outgrowing the Compact of the Fathers: Equal Rights, Woman Suffrage, and the United States Constitution, 1820–1878 (December 1987)

Ellen Carol DuBois

in Journals

Journal of American History, Volume 74, Issue 3, December 1987, Pages 836–862, https://doi.org/10.2307/1902156

What’s in a Name? The Limits of “Social Feminism”; or, Expanding the Vocabulary of Women’s History (December 1989)

Nancy F Cott

Journal of American History, Volume 76, Issue 3, December 1989, Pages 809–829, https://doi.org/10.2307/2936422

Political Style and Women’s Power, 1830–1930 (December 1990)

Michael McGerr

Journal of American History, Volume 77, Issue 3, December 1990, Pages 864–885, https://doi.org/10.2307/2078989

Review of New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States by Marjorie Spruill Wheeler (September 1994)

Laura F Edwards

in Journals

Journal of American History, Volume 81, Issue 2, September 1994, Page 731, https://doi.org/10.2307/2081305

Review of Women against Women: American Anti-Suffragism, 1880-1920 by Jane Jerome Camhi and The Home, Heaven, and Mother Party: Female Anti-Suffragists in the United States, 1868-1920 by Thomas J. Jablonksy (June 1996)

Anne M Boylan

in Journals

Journal of American History, Volume 83, Issue 1, June 1996, Pages 247–249, https://doi.org/10.2307/2945572

“The Liberty of Self-Degradation”: Polygamy, Woman Suffrage, and Consent in Nineteenth-Century America (December 1996)

Sarah Barringer Gordon

Journal of American History, Volume 83, Issue 3, December 1996, Pages 815–847, https://doi.org/10.2307/2945641

Review of African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920 by Rosalyn Terborg-Penn (June 1999)

Jane Rhodes

Journal of American History, Volume 86, Issue 1, June 1999, Page 273, https://doi.org/10.2307/2567500

Review of Woman Suffrage and Women’s Rights by Ellen Carol DuBois (June 2001)

Louise M Newman

in Journals

Journal of American History, Volume 88, Issue 1, June 2001, Pages 215–216, https://doi.org/10.2307/2674975

Review of Suffragists in an Imperial Age: U.S. Expansion and the Woman Question, 1870-1929 by Allison L. Sneider (December 2008)

Tracey Jean Boisseau

in Journals

Journal of American History, Volume 95, Issue 3, December 2008, Page 866, https://doi.org/10.2307/27694455

The Incorporation of American Feminism: Suffragists and the Postbellum Lyceum (March 2010)

Lisa Tetrault

Journal of American History, Volume 96, Issue 4, March 2010, Pages 1027–1056, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/96.4.1027

Suffragettes and Soviets: American Feminists and the Specter of Revolutionary Russia (March 2014)

Julia L Mickenberg

Journal of American History, Volume 100, Issue 4, March 2014, Pages 1021–1051, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jau004

Review of The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898 by Lisa Tetrault (September 2015)

Nicole Eaton

Journal of American History, Volume 102, Issue 2, September 2015, Pages 559–560, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jav368

Review of Counting Women’s Ballots: Female Voters from Suffrage through the New Deal by J. Kevin Corder and Christina Wolbrecht (March 2018)

Eileen McDonagh

in Journals

Journal of American History, Volume 104, Issue 4, March 2018, Page 1043, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jax493

Interchange: Women’s Suffrage, the Nineteenth Amendment, and the Right to Vote (December 2019)

Ellen Carol DuBois, Liette Gidlow, et al.

in Journals

Journal of American History, Volume 106, Issue 3, December 2019, Pages 662–694, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaz506