In 1880, a baby born in Montana (which, following the
lead of its neighboring states granted women the right to vote before 1920) would grow up to become the first woman in the United States Congress. Jeannette Rankin, who had graduated from Montana University in 1902 with a biology degree, made a fundamental career change in 1916. At thirty-nine years old, she was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives.
At a time when other American women had no right to vote at all, Rankin voted against the United States joining World War I. (Later, in 1940,
she was the only member of Congress to vote against declaring war on Japan after Pearl Harbor was attacked.)
Although Rankin and 48 other members of Congress voted against U.S. involvement in World War I, the country joined the war effort in 1917. While American men fought and died in Europe, their wives and daughters produced war materials at home. When the war was over, how could the country continue to deny such women full rights of citizenship?
Once the 19th Amendment (this is a PDF link) was proposed on 4 June 1919, it had to be ratified by three-quarters of the states. At first it seemed easy with more than half the states approving in the first year. Kentucky was the 24th state to ratify when Governor Edwin P. Morrow signed the “Anthony Amendment” on January 6, 1920.
Then the momentum shifted. Among growing opposition elsewhere, a six-week battle raged in Tennessee, Kentucky’s southern neighbor. The right of American women to vote ultimately turned on the decision of a 24-year-old Tennessee legislator,
Harry Burn. He had received a letter from his elderly mother, telling him:
Hurrah, and vote for suffrage! Don’t keep them in doubt.
Switching his position from “no” to “yes,” Burn pushed ratification over the top, and Tennessee became the crucial 36th state to approve the amendment. On 26 August 1920, Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified
ratification. The 19th Amendment, granting all female American citizens over the age of 21 the right to vote, was finally law.
Most of the early pioneers did not live long enough to personally experience this basic human right. Charlotte Wood was the only surviving suffragist who had signed the 1848 Declaration of Sentiments. And the state of Maryland, which finally ratified the 19th Amendment in 1941, did not submit its ratification papers to the State Department until 1958!