Behind the 19th Amendment

Behind the 19th Amendment

Behind the 19th Amendment

Reflecting on the past when the constitution was written, the idea of general suffrage was too drastic for our founding fathers to tackle. Our founding fathers decided to leave the states with the authority to decide the requirements for voting, these requirements included gender and race. (Janda) By allowing the states to decide who had the right to vote, the men who wrote the constitution did not think of the discrimination that would come out of the states. Essentially the men that signed sealed and delivered the constitution were the men that put the country into a century and a half long fight for freedom in voting. So its 1850 and White working man over the age of 21 become the first of the few people able to vote in most all of the states. During this time America was brewing a Civil War and forced colored Americans into slavery. Blacks were beginning fight for equality, this including the right to cast a vote. After America’s Civil War the 15th amendment was created making it illegal to deny the right to vote to anyone on account of their race. It wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act in the 1960s that blacks were given a vote. At the time of the change the government only thought of any political gain a black man’s vote might bring and had no interest in giving women a vote. Fore seeing no gain the government did not apply the Voting Rights Act to women. (Flexner) It was actually around, the late 1840’s when women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony starting speaking out for women and their suffrage. Women activists such as Stanton and Anthony were called suffragists. Thetypical woman suffragist was a middle-class unmarried woman who was not afraid to step outside their traditional role of American women. Around the time of the Suffragist movement and the Voting Rights Act women became more frustrated with their statuses in society because they had no say at all. A small positive was that not all states denied...

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