Women's Suffrage

Tracy A. Thomas, 1877

Abstract

The battle for women’s right to vote raged for almost seventy-five years before culminating in the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920. The U.S. Supreme Court initially interpreted the amendment broadly to give women general rights of equality. However, the Court soon retreated from this position, rendering the Nineteenth Amendment a narrow and silent actor in Supreme Court jurisprudence. This encyclopedia entry provides an overview of the history and development of the advocacy leading to the Nineteenth Amendment and the subsequent interpretation of that amendment in the courts.