(TheRedWire.com) – One hundred years ago, America was a different place. The country was more than a century old at that point, but it was still dominated by men. Women were second class citizens and they were fed up.
What do angry people do? They fight back.
Women’s Suffrage Movement
In 1920, the states ratified the 19th Amendment of the US Constitution. Women were finally given the right to vote in America. It was a decades-long fight for equality that started years before the Civil War ripped the country apart.
The expectation that women would sit quietly in the background while men ruled the world was something that was not unique to the United States. Society believed they should be subservient to their husbands for centuries. Wives weren’t really allowed to work, own property, or have anything that really belonged to them.
In fact, the suffrage movement didn’t really start with the right to vote, that was just the culmination of decades of fighting. As early as the 1700s, they were demanding rights. In 1771, New York passed a law that required husbands to get consent from their wives to sell property they brought into the marriage. More than 100 years later, in 1872, Illinois granted occupational licenses to women.
That’s how it went. Women chipped away at the laws that were keeping them down from almost the birth of the nation and eventually, the 19th Amendment became the law of the land.
19th Amendment
Before the amendment was ratified, states were actually already allowing women to vote. Eastern and southern states were not interested in equal rights, though.
Through grit and determination, women forced states into the 20th century. On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment was official. Since then, women have still fought small battles here and there, but in 2020, you’d never know the struggles their mothers and grandmothers went through. It’s pretty incredible and a perfect example of the sheer determination of Americans.
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