The movement for the right for women to vote began before the Civil War. When the Constitution was adopted only property owners could vote and women couldn’t own property. Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony organized women to change. They joined with abolitionists like Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. When the Civil War was over, black men gained the right to vote and women suffragists went away. By the late 1800’s new activists had taken up the cause among them my great, great aunt Belva Lockwood. Belva was one of the first women to practice
law in Washington DC and was the first woman to argue in front of the Supreme Court (and I wonder why I’m so bossy). She even ran for President in 1884 and 1888 on the National Equal Rights Party and was the first woman whose name appeared on an official ballot.
Skip to the beginning of the 20th century. As many western states were admitted to the union State Constitutions gave women the right to vote. Women marched on Washington DC and around the country for an amendment to the federal Constitution. It took another 20 years as the 19th Amendment was ratified by 36 of the 48 states by 1920.
My grandmother, Ruth Lockwood, was 24 when she voted in that first election in 1920. It had taken 7 decades of political lobbing, unrest and arrests before women citizens could vote. Don’t take your right for granted! Our predecessors worked hard and long for that right to VOTE!
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