Womens Movement Timeline


1848 - Seneca Falls, New York is the location for the first Women's Rights Convention. Elizabeth Cady Stanton writes "The Declaration of Sentiments" creating the agenda of women's activism for decades to come.

 

1861-1865 - During the Civil War, efforts for the suffrage movement come to a halt. Women put their energies toward the war effort.


1868 - The Fourteenth Amendment is ratified. "Citizens" and "voters" are defined exclusively as male.


1869 - Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony found the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), a more radical institution, to achieve the vote through a Constitutional amendment as well as push for other woman’s rights issues.  NWSA was based in New York.  Wyoming territory is organized with a woman suffrage provision.


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.  

1871 -Victoria Woodhull addresses the House Judiciary Committee, arguing women’s rights to vote under the fourteenth amendment.  The Anti-Suffrage Party is founded.


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.

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.  


1887 - The first vote on woman suffrage is taken in the Senate and is defeated.


1890 - Wyoming is admitted to the Union with a state constitution granting woman suffrage.  

 

1890-1925 - The Progressive Era begins. Women from all classes and backgrounds enter public life. Women's roles expand and result in an increasing politicization of women. Consequently the issue of woman suffrage becomes part of mainstream politics.


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.

 

1911 - Impact of Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: http://youtu.be/4ulaG9x4GpE


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. 

1916 - Jeanette Rankin of Montana is the first woman elected to the House of Representatives. Woodrow Wilson states that the Democratic Party platform will support suffrage.