Women’s Suffrage Movement

            The women suffragists were often times accused of being unfeminine, immoral, and people would threaten them.  The suffragists would fight for their right to vote. They felt that if African American males were allowed to vote, then why they shouldn’t be able to also? The group later split into two groups. Two of the major groups in the women suffrage that debated over the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments were the American Woman Association, which was led by Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe, and the New York City-based National Woman Suffrage Association which was founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B, Anthony.

            The National Woman Suffrage Association had full attention to the passing of a constitutional amendment. The American Woman Association were certain that the best way was to persuade the state government into giving women the right to vote before trying to alter the Constitution. Susan B. Anthony had voted illegally in 1872, and claimed that the fourteenth amendment gave her the right. She was found guilty and arrested. Because of the split between the two suffrage groups, only Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming gave women full rights to vote by 1900.

            In 1890, the groups came together to form the NAWSA, National American Woman Suffrage Association. Elizabeth Cady Stanton became the president of the Association. Politically, they still had trouble finding women who had the guts to become active. The movement grew, by 1912, Women and their children marched in a suffrage parade in NYC. Carrie Chapman Catt became the 1915 leader of NAWSA. On August 26, 1920, the Nineteenth amendment was ratified by three-fourths of the state. This granted women the right to vote.