A History of Women’s Suffrage

Click on any state to get more details.

WASH.1910 OREG.1912 CAL.1911 NEV.1914 IDAHO1896 UTAH.1896 ARIZ.1912 WYO.1869 COL.1863 MONT.1914 SDAK NEB KAN.1912 OKLA TEX NDAK MINN IOWA MO ARK LA WIS ILL 1913 MICH OHIO KY TENN. MISS FLA GA SC NC VA W.VA. MD DEL. N.J. PENN. R.I. CONN. MASS. VER. N.H. ME. N.Y. ALA N.MEX. IND
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White States - Full Suffrage, Shaded States - Partial Stuffrage, Dotted States - Presidential Partial County and State Stuffrage, Black States - No Suffrage

Key:

Full Suffrage

No Suffrage

Partial Suffrage

Presidential, Partial County

The majority of women in the United States did not gain the right to vote in national elections until 1920 with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. However, suffragists across the country had worked for decades at the state level to win the vote. By 1919, state-level voting laws varied dramatically. Some states granted women full suffrage, while others offered only partial or no suffrage.

While the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment was immediately celebrated by women across the United States, the amendment did not secure full voting rights for all women. African American women and Latinas in many parts of the country, for example, would wait nearly half a century for state laws restricting access to the ballot box to be lifted. For those who were barred from citizenship—American Indians and non-White immigrants, for example—franchise rights were out of reach.

Use the interactive map above to learn key details about the fight for women’s suffrage in each state up to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

View the original map in the Gilder Lehrman Collection here.
View our spotlight on this collection item here.

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California

Partial Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

18th

Date Ratified:

November 1, 1919

The western territories and states were far more liberal in granting women the right to vote than the eastern states. In 1896, in connection with the Populist Movement, California women organized a major campaign to amend the state constitution to include woman suffrage. This was one of the last campaigns in which Susan B. Anthony participated. After the major parties deserted them, they reorganized for a second effort. In 1910, again as the result of an insurgent third-party effort, the state Progressive Republicans put an initiative on the ballot. In a creative nine-month campaign featuring White working-class women and college graduates, and African American, Hispanic, and Asian women, the initiative was narrowly passed.

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New Mexico

Shaded

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

32nd

Date Ratified:

February 16, 1920

Unlike most western territories and states, New Mexico did not grant women the right to vote, perhaps because its population was heavily Hispanic. Along with Arizona it was the last territory to become a state in the continental United States. As the battle for suffrage raged, Adelina Otero Warren became a leader in the movement. When she was asked to head the New Mexico chapter of the Congressional Union—which later evolved into the National Woman’s Party—Warren agreed, but only on the condition that suffrage literature be published in both English and Spanish. In 1911, New Mexico suffragists won their first victory by gaining the right to vote in school elections. Full suffrage rights were only won with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment nine years later.

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Alabama

No Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

42nd (after rejecting ratification on September 22, 1919)

Date Ratified:

September 8, 1953

Although the Alabama suffrage movement started much later than that in the North, Alabama suffragists were no less fervent in their belief in voting rights, though suffrage activism was racially segregated. Notable leaders in the movement for women’s suffrage were Frances Griffin, an educator and reformer; Hattie Wilkins, founder of the Selma Equal Suffrage Association; and Adella Hunt Logan, a crusader for the rights of African American women. Despite their determination, when the Nineteenth Amendment was presented to the state legislature in September 1919, it was rejected out of fear for the enfranchisement of Black men. When the amendment was finally ratified in 1953 White women in Alabama, but not Black women, had been voting for thirty-three years.

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Arizona

Full Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

31st

Date Ratified:

February 12, 1920

Arizona became a territory in 1863 and the fight for women’s suffrage began. Suffragists were able to get bills for territorial suffrage on the floor of the legislature several times in the 1880s, but they were defeated. In 1903, the legislature passed a bill that was vetoed by the governor. In 1910, the governor defeated an effort to put women’s suffrage into the state constitution, saying it would hurt the chance for statehood. Nonetheless, when Arizona gained statehood on February 14, 1912, the state’s male voters quickly approved an initiative to give women the vote on November 12, 1912. Arizona became the 10th state to allow women the vote.

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Arkansas

Partial Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

12th

Date Ratified:

July 28, 1919

After delegates to the state constitutional convention of 1868 rejected women’s suffrage, Arkansas women took up the cause, often through the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Later they formed suffrage organizations including the Arkansas Woman Suffrage Association and the Political Equality League. African Americans were excluded from these organizations. In the twentieth century, Black women worked directly with the NAACP to ensure suffrage for all African Americans, a struggle that continued after adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment. In 1917, Arkansas women won the right to vote in primary elections. Two years later, Arkansas was one of the few southern states to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.

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Colorado

Full Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

22nd

Date Ratified:

December 15, 1919

When Colorado became a state in 1876, suffragists tried and failed to have woman suffrage included in its first constitution. A second referendum, powered by the rise of the People’s Party, was successful in 1893, making Colorado the first state in which male voters voted in favor of woman suffrage resulting in the right of women to vote equally twenty-seven years before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Colorado was also the first state in which women held elective office in the state legislature.

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Connecticut

Partial Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

37th

Date Ratified:

September 14, 1920

The fight for women’s suffrage in Connecticut began in 1869 with the founding of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association (CWSA) by activists Frances Ellen Burr and Isabella Beecher Hooker. They first lobbied for access to the ballot box in local elections, but later moved to the national stage. In 1918, Connecticut suffragists famously sent a telegram to President Woodrow Wilson asking him to endorse women’s right to vote. By that time, there was a strong opposition movement led by the Connecticut Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, which had over one hundred branches across the state. Connecticut delayed ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment until after it had been made part of the federal constitution.

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Delaware

Partial Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

39th (after rejecting on June 2, 1920)

Date Ratified:

March 6, 1923

Delaware was a racially segregated border state. In 1895, two suffragist organizations were founded in Delaware: the Delaware Equal Suffrage Association, with ties to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and the Wilmington Equal Suffrage Study Club, led by Black suffragists. The movement saw one of its first wins in 1900 when women who paid real estate taxes were granted the right to vote for school commissioners. In 1913, Mabel Vernon opened a Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage office to organize for a national women’s suffrage amendment. A year later, Alice Moore Dunbar, Blanche Williams Stubbs, Mary J. Woodlen, Emma Gibson Sykes, Alice Gertrude Baldwin, and others established the African American Equal Suffrage Study Club. In May 1914, during Delaware’s first women's suffrage parade, White newspapers refused to report on Black women’s participation. Between 1913 and 1917, an equal suffrage amendment to Delaware’s constitution was introduced in the state legislature and failed three times. Despite the efforts of national suffrage leaders, Delaware voted to reject the Nineteenth Amendment on June 2, 1920. Delaware ratified the Nineteenth Amendment after it was incorporated in the US Constitution.

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Florida

No Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

43rd

Date Ratified:

May 13, 1969

Many southern states, including Florida, were slow to actively connect with the suffrage movement due to its connection with the abolitionist movement and fear of enfranchising Black women. After a failed attempt to organize in 1893, the all-White Florida Equal Franchise League (FEFL) was established in 1912 and the Florida Equal Suffrage Association (FESA) was formed in 1913. Both groups lobbied their state and local officials to support women’s right to vote. African American women established a separate suffrage department of the Florida Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs working with its local clubs to fight for the vote. An essential voice in the struggle was that of Mary McLeod Bethune, who organized African American women and men to work for equal rights. Like most other southern states, Florida delayed ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment for a very long time.

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Georgia

No Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

45th (after rejecting on July 24, 1919)

Date Ratified:

February 20, 1970

Due to women’s suffrage’s ties to abolitionism and White fear of enfranchising Black women, women’s suffrage came late to southern states. In 1890, Helen Augusta Howard formed the Georgia Women’s Suffrage Association, which excluded Black women. African American suffragists including Lugenia Burns Hope, Adella Hunt Logan, Mary McCurdy, and Janie Porter Barrett worked independently of White suffragists to advance the cause at both the state and national levels. In 1892, the National American Woman Suffrage Association established the Committee on Southern Work to build momentum across the South. Three years later NAWSA held their annual meeting in Atlanta and allowed only White women to attend. On July 24, 1919, Georgia was the first state to reject the Nineteenth Amendment. When the amendment became law on August 18, 1920, Georgia blocked women from casting their ballots for another two years by citing a rule that required voters to register six months before an election. Women in Georgia did not vote in national elections until 1922. Georgia was one of the last states to ratify, in 1970.

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Idaho

Full Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

30th

Date Ratified:

February 11, 1920

On July 3, 1890, Idaho became the 43rd state to join the Union. Six years later, on November 3, 1896, it became the fourth state to grant women full voting rights and the second in which male voters passed an amendment to the state constitution, with over 67% of voters supporting women’s suffrage. Within two years of ratification, three women—Clara Campbell, Harriet Noble, and Mary Wright—were elected to the Idaho House of Representatives.

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Illinois

Presidential Partial County

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

Tied for 1st (ratified again on June 17, 1919 with a small correction)

Date Ratified:

June 10, 1919

In 1869, the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association was founded. Association president Grace Wilbur Trout worked with Jane Addams to lobby for women’s rights. Through their efforts, in 1913 Illinois became the first state east of the Mississippi where women had the right to vote in presidential and municipal elections. The nation’s boldest African American suffragist, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, worked to advance the rights of African Americans and to educate African American women on politics and advocacy. In Chicago, she was instrumental in the election of the city’s first African American alderman. Famously at the 1913 woman suffrage parade in Washington DC, she broke through suffragist segregation policies and marched with her state delegation.

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Indiana

Presidential, Partial County

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

26th

Date Ratified:

January 16, 1920

In 1851, the Indiana Woman’s Rights Association was formed, one of the first statewide women’s rights organizations in the US. Male legislators ignored a petition sent to the legislature in 1859 demanding women’s suffrage, but the organization continued to send petitions every year. Susan B. Anthony visited the state several times to help the cause and more organizations were formed, including the African American Hoosier Association. Amending the state constitution was especially difficult. In 1917, women were granted partial suffrage and the right to vote in presidential elections, some state officials and municipal posts, and delegates to the constitutional convention. More than 30,000 women registered to vote within the next few weeks. However, the state supreme court struck the law down, generating a change in strategy. The focus became national elections and working with national organizations to enfranchise women.

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Iowa

Partial Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

10th

Date Ratified:

July 2, 1919

Despite being the home for many years of suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt and the adopted state of women’s rights pioneer Amelia Bloomer, Iowa presented many challenges for women in their fight for equal rights, including the fact that the state legislature only met once every two years. Grassroots efforts were undertaken to reach out to women across the state—in both cities and more agrarian parts of the state. The Woman’s Suffrage Parade in Boone in 1908 was one of the first in the nation. In 1894 women became eligible to vote, but only on bond and tax issues. In 1916, the legislature passed an amendment granting the vote to women, but it was voted down by the all-male electorate.

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Kansas

Full Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

4th

Date Ratified:

June 16, 1919

When Kansas gained statehood in January 1861, women gained the right to participate in school board elections. Kansas held the first statewide referendum for women’s suffrage in 1867. It was a hard-fought battle, featuring all the national leaders including Stanton, Anthony, and Stone. The referendum featured separate votes on Black and woman suffrage, which were set against each other, and both failed. This defeat signaled the troubles ahead for the national suffrage movement. In 1887, women gained the right to vote in municipal elections, and that year the first woman mayor in the nation, Susanna Salter, was elected in Argonia, Kansas. Carrie Langston, the mother of Langston Hughes, was a prominent African American suffragist who worked to promote unity and equal voting rights. Kansas became the eighth state to grant women full voting rights by amendment to the state constitution in 1912.

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Kentucky

Partial Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

24th

Date Ratified:

January 6, 1920

Kentucky was an early leader in women’s voting rights. Ten years before the suffrage movement officially began at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, Kentucky had already granted those few tax-paying women who were heads of households the right to vote on issues related to education and taxation. Several cities granted women school suffrage, but fear of enfranchising now freed Black women led to revoking of those rights. A ten-year campaign by suffragist organizations to restore voting rights ensued. The fight was won, but a literacy test was required to keep out Black women voters. By the early twentieth century suffragist organizations in Kentucky were divided by race. White women formed state chapters of all major organizations and relentlessly campaigned for rights. Doctor Mary Britton, an African American doctor in Lexington, was a leader in the campaign for suffrage for African American women. Laura Clay, a White woman, became a leading voice for suffrage in Kentucky but eventually opposed a national amendment as a violation of states’ rights and opposed enfranchisement of Black women. Kentucky granted women the right to vote in presidential elections in 1920, shortly before Kentucky became one of the only southern states to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.

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Louisiana

Partial Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

46th (after rejecting on July 1, 1920)

Date Ratified:

June 11, 1970

The Louisiana suffrage movement began in 1878 when a probate court determined that a will was invalid because all the witnesses were women. Infuriated, Caroline Merrick, one of the witnesses, began her fight for women’s suffrage. The following year, Merrick and a White suffragist, Elizabeth Lyle Saxon, appealed before the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1879 for women’s enfranchisement, and women were allowed to vote in school elections. In 1895, two suffrage organizations aimed to extend voting rights exclusively to White women: the Portia Club and the Equal Rights Association (ERA). In 1896, Sylvanie Williams formed the Phyllis Wheatley Club, which fought to advance a number of social reforms, including voting rights for Black women. In 1898, taxpaying White women were granted the right to vote on tax measures. When in 1918 a state suffrage amendment failed, suffragists turned their attention to a federal amendment, which was vigorously opposed by former suffragist Kate Gordon on racist grounds. Louisiana voted to reject the Nineteenth Amendment on July 1, 1920. It was one of the last states to belatedly ratify I 1970.

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Maine

Presidential, Partial County

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

19th

Date Ratified:

November 5, 1919

Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony toured Maine and petitioned the legislature unsuccessfully for the right to vote. In 1873, the Maine Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA) was formed. In 1917, three decades of activism for the right to vote seemed to have generated success as the legislature passed an amendment granting suffrage. Joy was short lived, however, as the all-male electorate resoundingly defeated the suffrage amendment in a referendum. Maine did ratify the Nineteenth Amendment relatively early.

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Maryland

No Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

40th (after rejecting on February 24, 1920)

Date Ratified:

March 29, 1941

Often considered the first women’s suffragist in the British colonies, Margaret Brent appeared before the Maryland Assembly in 1648 to demand the right to vote. Over two hundred years later in 1867, Lavinia Dundore formed the state’s first women’s suffrage organization, the Maryland Equal Rights Society. A number of other suffrage organizations emerged, including the Maryland Woman Suffrage Association in 1889, the Maryland State Suffrage Association in 1894, the Equal Suffrage League of Baltimore in 1906, and the Just Government League of Maryland in 1909. Black women were excluded from these associations and organized separately to advance women’s and African Americans’ rights. In 1915, Augusta Chissell, Estelle Hall Young, and Margaret Hawkins founded the Progressive Women’s Suffrage Club to advocate universal women’s suffrage, residential desegregation, and other policies that would advance Black Marylanders’ rights. Some municipalities offered women limited suffrage, but all bills introduced in the Maryland legislature to grant women suffrage statewide failed. On February 24, 1920, Maryland voted against the Nineteenth Amendment. Following its ratification in August, Baltimore lawyer Oscar Leser sued to remove the names of two Baltimore women from the city’s list of registered voters. The case made its way to the US Supreme Court and in 1922, the Leser v. Garnett ruling confirmed the constitutionality of the Nineteenth Amendment and protected Maryland women’s right to vote.

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Massachusetts

Partial Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

8th

Date Ratified:

June 25, 1919

Massachusetts was the site of the first National Women’s Rights Convention in 1850 and of an early suffrage organization, the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, formed in 1868. Massachusetts Republican politicians were important Reconstruction Era advocates of woman suffrage, and many national leaders were from the state. Locally, women could vote for and hold positions on school boards as early as 1868. One of the first African American women’s rights societies, the Woman’s Era Club, was founded by Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin in Boston in 1893. In 1895, women were allowed to vote in a non-binding referendum to explore voting rights for women in municipal elections, which failed. One of the greatest challenges to the movement was lobbying by the Massachusetts Anti-Suffrage Association, the largest in the nation. A referendum to amend the state constitution was defeated in 1915, along with losses in four other eastern states, a defeat that helped to reignite the national movement for an amendment to the US Constitution.

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Michigan

Full Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

Tied for 1st

Date Ratified:

June 10, 1919

As in many states, women in Michigan had success in issues dealing with education and school board elections if they were tax paying citizens. The state university became the first major educational institution to enroll women in 1870. Michigan conducted the second voter referendum on suffrage in 1874, but suffragists suffered a heartbreaking loss. Repeated efforts to secure partial suffrage over the next decades failed, until finally, in 1918, as the Nineteenth Amendment was beginning to move through Congress, the state amended its constitution to enfranchise women.

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Minnesota

Presidential, Partial County

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

15th

Date Ratified:

September 8, 1919

As in much of the West and Midwest, the suffrage movement started later in Minnesota than in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic states. But Minnesotans had a road map to follow, created by suffragists who had been demanding equality since the 1840s. Suffrage groups began to grow across the state by the late 1870s. As in many states, women first won the right to vote in school board elections, in 1875. The Minnesota Woman Suffrage Association was formed in 1881 and soon had hundreds of members. During the Populist Era in the 1890s, there was a push for state enfranchisement, but it failed. Suffragists continued to press the state legislature but to no avail. In 1919, a year before the states ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, the state legislature granted women the right to vote in presidential elections. By then, some 30,000 women participated in the efforts of suffrage organizations across the state.

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Mississippi

Partial Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

48th (after rejecting on March 29, 1920)

Date Ratified:

March 22, 1984

In a deep southern state, suffrage efforts in Mississippi consistently ran up against the obstacle of hostility to Black women voting. In the 1890s, leaders of the National American Woman Suffrage Association sent organizers to Mississippi to get a suffrage movement started. Support for White women’s suffrage gained some traction among Democratic politicians in Mississippi who projected that they would win more votes and diminish Black men’s voting power if White women joined the electorate. At the same time, many male legislators held fast to the idea of a “southern lady” who was confined to the domestic sphere. In 1914, a state-level women’s suffrage amendment failed after much deliberation. That same year a US senator from Mississippi proposed a version of the constitutional woman suffrage amendment that would permit the disfranchisement of African American women. By 1915, many Mississippi suffragists turned their attention to a federal amendment, despite their preference for state action, but continued to face tremendous opposition. Mississippi legislators voted to reject the Nineteenth Amendment on March 29, 1920. African American women faced insurmountable obstacles in trying to register and vote after 1920. Fannie Lou Hamer led campaigns for Black men and women to be able to vote in the 1960s. It was the last state to ratify, sixty-four years after enactment, in 1984.

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Missouri

Presidential, Partial County

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

11th

Date Ratified:

July 4, 1919

The Woman’s Suffrage Association of Missouri was founded in 1867. In 1869, Missouri hosted a national suffrage convention in St. Louis. Virginia Minor discussed her belief that the right to vote was inherent in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Through 1872, hundreds of women around the country, most famously Susan B. Anthony, went to polling places and demanded the right to vote. Denied the right to vote, Minor took her case to the Supreme Court and in Minor v. Happersett the Court ruled that “the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone” and that voting is not one of the “privileges and immunities” of national citizenship. Despite this major setback, Missouri women continued to fight for the vote. Between 1867 and 1901 MIssouri women petitioned the state legislature eighteen times for the right to vote.

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Montana

Full Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

Tied for 13th

Date Ratified:

August 2, 1919

Montana women were granted full voting rights in 1914, largely due to the efforts of Jeannette Rankin, who returned to Montana after having served as a lobbyist for a large women’s organization. A polished speaker, she addressed the Montana legislature on the right of women to vote. In 1916, she cast her first vote for herself to represent Montana in the House of Representatives, making her the first woman to serve in Congress—four years before most of the women in the United States could vote. One of her first actions was to ask Congress to consider the Susan B. Anthony Suffrage bill (the basis of the Nineteenth Amendment), which had been debated over more than thirty years. This time the House of Representatives passed the bill, beginning the ratification process. She lobbied publicly and negotiated tirelessly in Congress. Rankin left Congress after one term, but was elected again in 1940.

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Nebraska

Presidential, Partial County

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

Tied for 13th

Date Ratified:

August 2, 1919

Nebraska was an early center of suffrage activism, perhaps influenced by the important referendum in next-door Kansas in 1867. It was one of the earliest states in which women gained school suffrage. In 1881, Erasmus Correll, a member of the Nebraska House of Representatives, proposed a referendum to remove the word “male” from the state constitution in order to enfranchise women. It was resoundingly rejected despite months of campaigning by suffrage leaders. In 1917, with support from the governor, women were granted the right to vote in municipal and presidential elections.

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Nevada

Full Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

28th

Date Ratified:

February 7, 1920

Written in 1864, Nevada’s first constitution granted the vote exclusively to White men. In 1869, Assemblyman Curtis Hillyer delivered an eloquent argument in favor of women’s suffrage. Two years later when the next session was held, many who supported the amendment were no longer in office. The vote was defeated and the women of Nevada would see four more suffrage bills fail before winning the right to vote. In 1910, the Nevada Equal Franchise Society (NEFS) was formed by Jeanne Weir. NEFS president Anne Martin, a history professor and veteran of the British suffrage movement, led the campaign to victory in 1914.

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New Hampshire

Presidential, Partial County

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

16th

Date Ratified:

September 10, 1919

“Live free or die” was an ironic motto for New Hampshire women, whose attempts to gain voting rights often did not meet their expectations or goals for equality. As in many states, the movement was tied to the abolitionist movement. Armenia White, an ardent abolitionist, founded the first suffrage association in the state. The first successes for women’s suffrage, as elsewhere, came when women won the right to sit on school committees in 1871 and to vote in school board elections in 1878. A referendum to allow women to vote in municipal elections, however, was defeated in 1887. Surprisingly, a campaign to remove the word “male” from the state constitution as a qualifier to voting passed in the 1902 state convention but was soundly rejected by voters in 1903.

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New Jersey

Partial Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

29th

Date Ratified:

February 9, 1920

For many years, New Jersey was one of the most progressive colonies and then states in allowing White women and Black women and men to vote. Written in 1776, New Jersey’s first constitution granted the right to “all inhabitants of the colony” who were twenty-one years of age and property owners. In 1790, the legislature amended the law to specify “he or she,” confirming that both women and men were eligible. However, in 1807 the legislature rescinded this privilege by restricting suffrage to tax-paying, White male citizens. In 1857, the New Jersey women’s suffrage movement resumed when Lucy Stone refused to pay her property taxes in Orange, New Jersey, decrying “taxation without representation.” In 1887, women in New Jersey regained the right to vote in school elections only. But women in the state continued to organize, in 1915 attempting and failing at a referendum to amend the state constitution. New Jersey–born leaders like Alice Paul were at the forefront of the final push in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, 113 years after women in New Jersey lost the right to vote.

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New York

Full Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

Tied for 5th

Date Ratified:

June 16, 1919

Considered by many to be the birthplace of the suffrage movement after the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, New York remained a leader in the fight for equal rights. The state was home to many of the greatest voices and activists in the suffrage movement, including Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and later in life, Carrie Chapman Catt. In 1869, Stanton and Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association in New York City. In 1890 it merged with the American Woman Suffrage Association to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. An effort, led by Stanton and others, to get the state legislature to amend the constitution to include women failed in 1894. In the early 1900s, New York City, under the leadership of Stanton’s daughter Harriot Stanton Blatch, led the way in bringing immigrant, wage-earning women into the movement. New York was also the home of many of the nation’s wealthiest suffragists, led by Alma Vanderbilt Belmont. In Brooklyn, African American suffragists, led by Sarah J. Garnet, organized their own societies. From 1912 through 1915, New York was the site of grand suffrage marches. In 1915, a hard fought voter referendum failed. Under Catt’s leadership, a second referendum succeeded in 1917, setting the state for the successful beginning of the ratification campaign in the Congress.

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North Carolina

No Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

47th

Date Ratified:

May 6, 1971

In 1894, the North Carolina chapter of the Equal Suffrage Association was established with Helen Morris as its president. Three years later, a women’s suffrage bill was introduced to the North Carolina legislature, but quickly died. After this defeat, the movement stalled. The state was the home of some of the most aggressive legal and extralegal campaigns against Black male voters, and racist state and municipal legislators feared that enfranchising women would allow for African Americans’ access to the ballot box. In 1913, the state suffrage movement revived when Gertrude Weil formed the North Carolina Equal Suffrage League. However, suffragists’ attempts to enfranchise women in primaries and municipal elections failed in 1919. The state’s most prominent African American suffrage activists were Anna Julia Cooper and Charlotte Hawkins Brown. North Carolina almost became the final state to ratify in the summer of 1920 but instead voted to reject the Nineteenth Amendment, belatedly ratifying in 1971.

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North Dakota

Presidential, Partial County

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

20th

Date Ratified:

December 1, 1919

In 1875, women in the Territory of Dakota failed to pass woman suffrage by one vote. As in many territories and states, Dakota women gained the right to vote in school elections in 1883. In 1885, the governor vetoed another bill that would have granted women full voting rights. In 1889, the Dakota territory entered the Union as two states, North and South Dakota. Members of suffrage organizations and their allies in the temperance movement continued to advocate on behalf of votes for women. The legislature passed a women’s suffrage bill in 1913, but the male voters of North Dakota defeated the bill by referendum in 1914. In 1917, the governor signed a law granting women the right to vote in presidential elections and “some municipal” elections.

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Ohio

Partial Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

Tied for 5th

Date Ratified:

June 15, 1919

Ohio was the first state to hold a women’s rights convention after the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. As part of the Western Reserve it was home to a robust abolitionist community. Sojourner Truth spoke at the 1851 conference in defense of both freedom and rights for women. In 1894, women in Ohio won the right to vote in school board elections, but little progress was made in obtaining full suffrage rights. Harriet Taylor Upton, treasurer of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and a friend of Republican president-to-be Warren G. Harding, played an important role in the final stages of the suffrage battle. Liquor forces tried to undo the state legislature’s ratification by voter referendum, but the courts would not allow it

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Oklahoma

Full Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

33rd

Date Ratified:

February 23, 1920

Oklahoma became an incorporated territory of the United States on May 2, 1890. The territorial legislature quickly granted women the right to vote in school elections. Unlike other western territories and states, however, Oklahoma did not fully enfranchise women. By 1896 there were more than twenty suffrage groups in the territory. However, several measures to grant voting rights to women failed in the legislature. On November 16, 1907, Oklahoma entered the Union as a state, but suffrage advocates failed to enfranchise women during the state constitutional convention. Attitudes changed after World War I, and in 1918 Oklahoma voters adopted universal suffrage for women by a large margin.

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Oregon

Full Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

25th

Date Ratified:

January 12, 1920

In 1872, Oregon suffragists joined women from around the country to go to the polls on Election Day, but they failed to get their ballots accepted. Abigail Scott Duniway, one of the boldest of western suffragists, led the movement for many years. Between 1884 and 1912, the Oregon Woman Suffrage Association repeatedly submitted a constitutional amendment granting women’s suffrage but it was always defeated. In 1912, suffrage finally gained a majority vote, making Oregon the seventh state or territory to enfranchise women, along with Arizona and Kansas that year.

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Pennsylvania

No Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

7th

Date Ratified:

June 24, 1919

One of the founders of the suffrage movement, Lucretia Mott, founded the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. In 1848, Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton kickstarted the national suffrage movement at Seneca Falls, NY. After Philadelphia hosted a women’s rights convention in 1854, suffrage societies began to form throughout the state. Hattie Purvis was one of the few African American suffragists in the National Woman Suffrage Association, in which she held office. Suffragists continued to lobby unsuccessfully for an amendment to the state constitution, a voter referendum failing in 1915. After Congress finally sent a federal amendment to the states in 1919, Pennsylvania ratified quickly.

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Rhode Island

Partial Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

23rd

Date Ratified:

January 6, 1920

In Rhode Island in 1853, Paula Wright Davis, a noted abolitionist, began to publish The Una, the first periodical of the women’s rights movement. Davis co-founded the New England Woman Suffrage Association in 1868. In 1883, political parties collaborated to defeat a suffrage constitutional referendum. In 1903, the Rhode Island Union of Colored Women’s Clubs was formed and became the largest organization in Rhode Island to support women’s suffrage. After 1900, women pursued a new strategy, advocating an amendment to the US Constitution. The formation of a Woman Suffrage Party in Rhode Island in 1912 also strengthened the campaign to win women the vote. The Rhode Island state legislature granted women the right to vote in presidential elections in April 1917. Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment was opposed by the governor until relatively late in the process.

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South Carolina

No Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

44th (after rejecting on January 28, 1920)

Date Ratified:

July 1, 1969

South Carolina was the home of the Confederacy. Nonetheless, the state’s women’s suffrage movement began at the state constitutional convention of 1868 when William Whipper, a Black Republican politician, proposed striking the word “male” from the voting requirements. The following year, Lottie Rollin became the first Black woman to address the South Carolina state legislature when she made a speech advocating enfranchising women. In 1871, Rollin established the South Carolina chapter of the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) and developed a relationship with AWSA president and abolitionist Lucy Stone. By the 1880s, new suffrage organizations were forming across the state but now Black women and men were barred. In 1890, Virginia Durant Young formed the South Carolina Equal Rights Association and allied with Senator Robert R. Hemphill to win the vote for property-owning White women. One of the most effective ratification campaigners was Carolinian Anita Pollitzer, but nonetheless South Carolina voted to reject the Nineteenth Amendment on January 28, 1920.

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South Dakota

Full Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

21st

Date Ratified:

December 4, 1919

South Dakota’s 1889 constitution specified “male” in defining voting rights. It also included a surprising clause calling on the state legislature to send a proposal for a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote in 1890. That drew the attention of the leading suffrage activists in the nation, and both Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt toured the state to advocate for amendment, blaming immigrant farmers when male voters rejected it. Similar measures lost in 1895 and 1898. In 1914, suffrage advocates lost another referendum, but the gap between defeat and victory had narrowed. In 1916, when the ballot included amendments on women’s suffrage and prohibition, suffrage lost but prohibition won. Two years later, voters finally approved an amendment that gave South Dakota women the right to vote two years before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

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Tennessee

Presidential, Partial County

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

36th (ratification processed completed!)

Date Ratified:

August 18, 1920

On August 18, 1920, the United States set a new course when Tennessee became the needed 36th state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. In 1920, the governor called a special meeting of the legislature to consider the amendment. To overcome strong anti-suffrage resistance in the state, leaders of the national suffrage movement such as Carrie Chapman Catt of NAWSA and Sue Shelton White of the National Woman’s Party joined women from Tennessee in lobbying legislators on their historic ratification vote. African American suffragists Frankie Pierce and Dr. Mattie Coleman were also active in the movement. Josephine A. Pearson, the president of the Tennessee State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, also lobbied legislators in the final days of the legislative session. The legislation passed quickly in the senate, but there were fierce debates in the house. Harry T. Burn of Niota changed his vote from “no” to “yes” after being urged to do so by his mother. By one vote, Tennessee had ensured ratification and national suffrage rights for women. At the state level, Tennessee had granted women voting rights in municipal and presidential elections two months before ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment.

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Texas

Partial Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

9th

Date Ratified:

June 28, 1919

Before Texas’s 1868–1869 constitutional convention, women argued that as citizens and taxpayers, they were entitled to vote. The motion was soundly defeated by the full assembly. It was again rejected in 1875. As in many states, leaders of the suffrage movement were also active in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Texas women broke ground in the South when they were granted the right to vote in primaries in 1918, but an amendment to enfranchise women was defeated. Despite the history of resistance to women’s suffrage, Texas was the first southern state to vote for ratification. After ratification, Black women such as suffrage activist Christia Adair were barred from voting by devices such as a racially exclusive primary in this one-party state.

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Utah

Full Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

17th

Date Ratified:

September 30, 1919

In 1869, Utah became the second US territory, after Wyoming, to grant women the right to vote. Utah’s large Mormon population and the practice of polygamy led to unique arguments over women’s rights. In 1887, through the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which restricted polygamy and other Mormon practices in Utah, Congress abolished territorial laws, including votes for women. This action angered both Mormon and non-Mormon women, who responded by establishing suffrage organizations. In 1888, Emily Richards gained authorization from Church leaders to form a Utah branch of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association. Among its important leaders was Emmeline Wells, editor of the pro-suffrage Woman’s Exponent. When Utah applied for statehood in 1895, Mormons and non-Mormons agreed that the right of women to vote must be included in the state constitution. Utah became a state in January 1896 and both men and women could legally vote.

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Vermont

Presidential, Partial County

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

38th

Date Ratified:

February 8, 1921

In 1852, newspaper editor Clarina Nichols was the first woman to speak before the Vermont legislature advocating women’s suffrage. In 1880, tax-paying women won the right to vote in school district elections. This victory led the Vermont Women’s Suffrage Association (VWSA) to push for the right to vote in municipal elections, but failed. In 1907, the VWSA was reorganized and renamed the Vermont Equal Suffrage Association. Annette Parmelee and Lucy Daniels emerged as prominent suffrage leaders. Vermont was one of two New England states to resist ratifying the Nineteenth Amendment and only voted to ratify six months after the amendment had become the law of the land.

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Virginia

No Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

41st (after rejecting on February 12, 1920)

Date Ratified:

February 21, 1952

Virginia’s earliest attempts at organizing for women’s voting rights were led by Anna Whitehead Bodeker, who came from New Jersey to build the movement. Her efforts led to the establishment of the Virginia State Woman Suffrage Association in 1870, but the organization dissolved within a decade. Women’s suffrage did not pick up again until 1909 with the founding of the Virginia Equal Suffrage League. Fissures in the movement developed around race. Some White suffragists, such as Mary Johnston, argued for the inclusion of Black women, while others viewed White women’s suffrage as an opportunity to advance White supremacist legislation. Anti-suffrage sentiment also remained strong. But suffragists found allies in the Men’s Equal Suffrage League of Virginia, formed by pro-suffrage businessmen, who signed a resolution in support of women’s suffrage in 1912. By 1919, the Equal Suffrage League’s membership had reached 32,000. Nonetheless, the Virginia legislature voted against ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment on February 12, 1920. After ratification, despite great efforts by the state to keep Black women from the polls, African American businesswoman Maggie Lena Walker led efforts for their registration.

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West Virginia

No Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

34th

Date Ratified:

March 10, 1920

In the 1890s, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was the major source of suffrage involvement. The suffrage movement came very late to West Virginia. In 1915, suffragists pressured the legislature for a referendum on women’s voting rights. It met with overwhelming defeat by the all-male electorate. In 1919, suffragists lobbied heavily for the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. It passed in the legislature by a vote of 15-14.

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Wisconsin

Presidential, Partial County

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

Tied for 1st

Date Ratified:

June 10, 1919

Wisconsin was the site of an active suffrage movement from the 1860s. In 1869, women in Wisconsin won the right to hold school board positions. In 1884, they won the right to vote in elections related to school board and education issues. By 1887, that decision was repealed. In 1901, the legislature restored those rights. In 1912, a statewide referendum was held and women’s suffrage was voted down by Wisconsin’s male voters and another referendum failed to get out of the state legislature in 1915. Led by father and daughter suffragists David and Ada James, Wisconsin tied with Illinois and Michigan to be the first state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment.

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Wyoming

Full Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

27th

Date Ratified:

January 27, 1920

With the exception of New Jersey’s first constitution, which allowed women to vote up until 1807, Wyoming was the first state or territory to grant women the right to vote. The Woman Suffrage Act was passed in 1869, fifty-one years before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Women could vote, serve on juries, and hold office. The law narrowly avoided being repealed by a subsequent state legislature. Esther Hobart Morris, who served as a justice of the peace, was the first woman to hold federal office in the United States. When Wyoming applied for statehood, Congress balked because of its liberal laws. Wyoming’s legislature replied that they would stay out of the Union “for 100 years rather than come in without women.” Congress relented and Wyoming became the 44th state, with women voters, in 1890.

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Alaska

Partial Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

N/A

Date Ratified:

N/A

The Alaska territory was incorporated into the United States in 1912. Suffragist Cornelia Hatcher was a leading voice for the suffragist cause and gave speeches around the territory to garner support and lobby elected officials. The suffragists’ efforts led to a law in 1913 that women with the same citizenship qualifications as male voters could vote, a franchise which did not include federal office. However, women married to non-citizens were denied independent citizenship rights and could not vote. This had a significant impact on the number of Alaska women who were eligible to vote, as a third of the White men were foreign born and not naturalized, while most women were American born. The issue of citizenship also curbed the voting rights of Native women, who were excluded due to the Elk v. Wilkins (1884) Supreme Court ruling that barred Native peoples from citizenship. When Native peoples gained birthright citizenship in 1924, the Alaska legislature responded quickly by passing the Alaska Voters’ Literacy Act of 1925, which instated literacy tests for voting that disenfranchised many Native and African American women and men until the passage of the Alaska Equal Rights Act of 1945.

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Hawaii

Partial Suffrage

Number to Ratify 19th Amendment:

N/A

Date Ratified:

N/A

For generations, Hawai’ian women had held significant political power. A limited number of women who had the right to vote and hold office in 1893 lost these rights when a group of American and European businessmen overthrew Queen Liliʻuokalani and established a US-controlled provisional government. Disenfranchisement persisted after the United States annexed Hawai’i as a territory in 1898. In 1912, Wilhelmina Kekelaokalaninui Widemann Dowsett founded the National Women’s Equal Suffrage Association of Hawai’i (WESAH), the first Hawaiian woman suffrage organization, and led a powerful suffrage movement for the territory. As a territory, Hawai'i could not participate in the ratification process, but on November 2, 1920, Hawai'i sent a symbolic ratification star to the National Woman’s Party in celebration of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave Hawaiian women equal territorial suffrage. The women of Hawaii were full voting members when Hawaii became a state in 1959.