1849

The first state constitution in California extends property rights to women.

1852

The issue of women's property rights is presented to the Vermont Senate by Clara Howard Nichols. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe, is published and quickly becomes a bestseller.

1866

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony form the American Equal Rights Association, an organization dedicated to the goal of suffrage for all regardless of gender or race.

1869

The American Equal Rights Association is wrecked by disagreements over the Fourteenth Amendment and the Fifteenth Amendment which would enfranchise Black American males while avoiding the question of woman suffrage entirely.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony found the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), to achieve the vote through a Constitutional amendment as well as push for other woman’s rights issues. Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe form the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) to work for woman suffrage through amending individual state constitutions.  

1871

Victoria Woodhull addresses the House Judiciary Committee, arguing women’s rights to vote under the fourteenth amendment.  

The Anti-Suffrage Party is founded.

1876

Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage disrupt the official Centennial program at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, presenting a “Declaration of Rights for Women” to the Vice President.

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE CANNOT VOTE

The Supreme Court rules that Native Americans are not citizens as defined by the 14th Amendment and, thus, cannot vote.

1882

THE CHINESE EXCLUSION ACT IS PASSED

The Chinese Exclusion Act is passed on May 6, 1882, preventing Chinese immigrants from attaining citizenship and voting.

1887

The first vote on woman suffrage is taken in the Senate and is defeated.

1888

The National Council of Women in the United States is established to promote the advancement of women in society.

1892

Olympia Brown founds the Federal Suffrage Association to campaign for woman’s suffrage. 

1893

Colorado adopts woman suffrage.

1896

Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Frances E.W. Harper among others found the the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. Utah joins the Union with full suffrage for women.  Idaho adopts woman suffrage.  

1910

Washington State adopts woman suffrage. The Women’s Political Union organizes the first suffrage parade in New York City. 

1912

Woman Suffrage is supported for the first time at the national level by a major political party -- Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party. 
Twenty thousand suffrage supporters join a New York City suffrage parade. 

Teenage activist and women's rights supportor Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, a 16-year-old immigrant from China, helps to lead the New York suffrage parade on horseback. She supports suffrage despite not being able to benefit from it under the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Oregon, Kansas, and Arizona adopt woman suffrage.

1914

Nevada and Montana adopt woman suffrage. The National Federation of Women’s Clubs, which had over two million women members throughout the U.S., formally endorses the suffrage campaign.

NWP FORMED

Alice Paul and Lucy Burns organize the Congressional Union--later renamed National Women’s Party--and adopt radical strategies from the British Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU)

1916

Jeannette Rankin of Montana is the first woman elected to the House of Representatives. Woodrow Wilson states that the Democratic Party platform will support suffrage.

1918

Representative Rankin opens debate on a suffrage amendment in the House. The amendment passes. The amendment fails to win the required two thirds majority in the Senate. 

President Woodrow Wilson states his support for a federal woman suffrage amendment. President Wilson addresses the Senate about adopting woman suffrage at the end of World War I.

1850

Worcester, Massachusetts, is the site of the first National Women's Rights Convention. A strong alliance is formed with the Abolitionist Movement.

1851

Worcester, Massachusetts is the site of the second National Women's Rights Convention. At a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio, Sojourner Truth, a former slave, delivers her now memorable speech, "Ain't I a woman?"

1861-1865

During the Civil War, efforts for the suffrage movement come to a halt. Women put their energies toward the war effort.

1868

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Parker Pillsbury publish the first edition of The Revolution.

1870

The Fifteenth Amendment gave black men the right to vote.  NWSA refused to work for its ratification and instead the members advocate for a Sixteenth Amendment that would dictate universal suffrage.  Frederick Douglass broke with Stanton and Anthony over the position of NWSA.  The Woman’s Journal is founded and edited by Mary Livermore, Lucy Stone, and Henry Blackwell. 

1872

Susan B. Anthony casts her ballot for Ulysses S. Grant in the presidential election and is arrested and brought to trial in Rochester, New York.  Fifteen other women are arrested for illegally voting.  Sojourner Truth appears at a polling booth in Battle Creek, Michigan, demanding a ballot to vote; she is turned away.

1874

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is founded by Annie Wittenmyer. With Frances Willard at its head (1876), the WCTU became an important proponent in the fight for woman suffrage.  As a result, one of the strongest opponents to women's enfranchisement was the liquor lobby, which feared women might use their vote to prohibit the sale of liquor.

1878

A Woman Suffrage Amendment is proposed in the U.S. Congress. When the 19th Amendment passes forty-one years later, it is worded exactly the same as this 1878 Amendment.  

1890

NWSA and AWSA merge and the National American Woman Suffrage Association is formed. The Movement focuses efforts on securing suffrage at the state level. The American Federation of Labor declares support for woman suffrage. The South Dakota campaign for woman suffrage loses.

1894

600,000 signatures are presented to the New York State Constitutional Convention in a failed effort to bring a woman suffrage amendment to the voters.

1895

Elizabeth Cady Stanton publishes The Woman’s Bible.  After its publication, NAWSA moves to distance itself from Stanton because many conservative suffragists considered her to be too radical and, thus, potentially damaging to the suffrage campaign.

1903

Mary Dreier, Rheta Childe Dorr, Leonora O'Reilly, and others form the Women's Trade Union League of New York, an organization of middle- and working-class women dedicated to unionization for working women and to woman suffrage.

1911

The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NAOWS) is organized.

Jovita Idár, a Mexican-American journalist and activist, writes pro-suffrage articles for her family's Spanish-language newspaper, La Cronica. She calls on working women to join the fight for the vote, pointing to recently enfranchised women in California as a model.

1913

In 1913, suffragists organized a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. The parade was the first major suffrage spectacle organized by the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). 

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, one of the founders of the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago, is told that she can only march in the black section of the Woman Suffrage Parade. Refusing to march in segregation, she emerges from the crowd and joins the White Illinois delegation as they march by.

1915

Mabel Vernon and Sara Bard Field are involved in a transcontinental tour which gathers over a half-million signatures on petitions to Congress. Forty thousand march in a NYC suffrage parade. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts continue to reject woman suffrage.

1917

New York women gain suffrage. Arkansas women are allowed to vote in primary elections.  In June, arrests of the National Woman’s party picketers begin on charges of obstructing sidewalk traffic. In November, the government unconditionally releases the picketers in response to public outcry and an inability to stop National Woman’s Party picketers’ hunger strike.

1919

The Senate finally passes the Nineteenth Amendment and the ratification process begins.

August 26, 1920

Three quarters of the state legislatures ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. 
American Women win full voting rights.