19th Amendment: Women’s Right to Vote

Introduction

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

With the 19th Amendment, women won the right to vote. This Amendment grew out of decades of advocacy by the suffragists and their allies.  Women’s suffrage began out West in the late 1800s and eventually spread to the rest of the nation—culminating in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.  Even so, it would take many more years—and the hard work of the Civil Rights Movement—to extend voting rights on the ground to all women, including women of color.