This Day in History

Aug. 26, 1920: 19th Amendment Adopted

Time Periods: 1920
Themes: Civil Rights Movements, Democracy & Citizenship, Laws & Citizen Rights, Organizing, Women's History
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The 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution was formally adopted on Aug. 26, 1920. It stated,

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Suffragists White House | Zinn Education Project

Suffragists from Pennsylvania on picket line in 1917 front of the White House. Source: Harris & Ewing, Washington, D.C.

Did this impact all women in the U.S. equally? To help students examine issues of race and class in the long fight for women’s suffrage, we offer the role play: “Seneca Falls, 1848: Women Organize for Equality.” Another free unit offers three lessons about voting rights is “Who Gets to Vote? Teaching About the Struggle for Voting Rights in the United States.”

Read about the struggle for full voting rights in Mississippi and the U.S. in ‘Is This America?’: 50 Years Ago Sharecroppers Challenged Mississippi Apartheid, LBJ, and the Nation.”

Related Resources
Mural by Blake Chamberlain on an interior wall of the Women's Rights National Historical Park Visitor Center depicting influential people of the women's suffrage movement.
Teaching Activities (Free)

Seneca Falls, 1848: Women Organize for Equality

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 17 pages.
A role play allows students to examine issues of race and class when exploring both the accomplishments and limitations of the Seneca Falls Convention.

Teaching Activities (Free)

Who Gets to Vote? Teaching About the Struggle for Voting Rights in the United States

Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
Unit with three lessons on voting rights, including the history of the struggle against voter suppression in the United States.

Teaching Activities (Free)

Constitution Role Play: Whose “More Perfect Union”? and The Constitutional Convention: Who Really Won?

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. 24 pages.
The U.S. Constitution endorsed slavery and favored the interests of the owning classes. What kind of Constitution would have resulted from founders who were representative of the entire country? That is the question addressed in this role play activity.

Bombed out cars by Jo Freeman | Zinn Education Project
Articles

‘Is This America?’: Sharecroppers Challenged Mississippi Apartheid, LBJ, and the Nation

Article. By Julian Hipkins III and Deborah Menkart. If We Knew Our History Series.
At the 1964 Democratic National convention, former sharecropper Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party made a dramatic challenge to the all-white delegation. Their actions rocked the political landscape.

Articles

What Our Students Should Know About the Struggle for the Ballot — but Won’t Learn from Their Textbooks

By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca

From voter ID laws to voter-roll purges, gerrymandering to poll closures to the deadly in-person voting conditions during a pandemic, the right to vote is under attack and the stakes are high. It is critical that students learn about the fight for voting rights, past and present.
Profiles

Women in Labor History

Profile. Zinn Education Project.
Brief bios of two dozen women of note in the labor movement.

Books: Non-Fiction

Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All

Book — Non-fiction. By Martha S. Jones. 2021. 368 pages.
This book excavates the lives and work of Black women from the earliest days of the republic to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond.

This Day in History

Aug. 6, 1964: Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Convention

The MFDP held a State Convention with 2,500 people in Jackson, Mississippi.

This Day in History

Aug. 22, 1964: Sharecroppers Demand Delivery of Full Suffrage in the U.S.

Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, and the other members of the MFDP at the Democratic National Convention, questioned the nation about the lack of “one person, one vote” in the United States.

The Sugar Shack | Zinn Education Project
This Day in History

Aug. 6, 1965: Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act was signed into law.