1917 – Women Win the Right to Vote

On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, empowering all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, including the right to vote. It took activists and reformers nearly 100 years to win that right, and the campaign was not easy. The video I posted explains a horrific night three years prior to the ratification of the 19^th Amendment. As Woodrow Wilson took office in January of 1917 demonstrators took up positions outside the white house holding round the clock vigils demanding the vote for women. They aimed to humiliate the president and expose the hipocracy of making the world safe for democracy when there was none at home. In reply to these actions 33 innocent women were convicted of “obstructing sidewalk” and were taken into custody. The warden ordered his forty prison guards armed with clubs to teach the suffragists a lesson they would never forget. For weeks, they were subjected to the cruelty of their guards, bent on teaching them the harsh lesson ordered by the President – choking, beating, grabbing, slamming, and kicking them into submission.

-Alan Daniel