08/18/2026
On This Day in History
The 19th Amendment Was Ratified.
On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified, granting women the right to vote. The decisive vote for ratification was cast in the Tennessee House of Representatives by a 24-year-old politician who reportedly changed his vote after receiving a letter from his mother. The suffrage movement itself began in the mid-19th century and was led by women who had become politically active through the abolitionist and temperance movements. Women’s rights were first formally discussed at a Seneca Falls, New York conference organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. In 1900, Carrie Chapman Catt took over from Susan B. Anthony as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and began to push for a constitutional amendment to grant women the vote. Soon after, the National Women’s Party, led by Lucy Burns and Alice Paul, engaged in civil disobedience and even protested to President Wilson outside the White House. Countless women organized, marched, protested, and worked toward the goal of getting the vote over the years. Eventually, President Wilson called a special session of Congress and personally appealed for women’s suffrage in May 1919. After having voted down the measure several times before, Congress finally approved it and sent it out to the states for ratification. By March 1920, just one more state was needed for the 19th Amendment to become law. The Tennessee General Assembly addressed the question of women’s suffrage in August, and while the State Senate voted to ratify, the House failed to pass the measure twice, with both attempts ending on a stalemate of 48-48. State Representative Harry T. Burn, then just 24 years old, had originally planned to ratify, but members of his party and some of his constituents convinced him to vote against the measure. However, during the third voting session on August 18, 1920, he changed his vote — supposedly after receiving a telegram from his mother, Febb Ensminger Burn, urging him to vote in favor of women’s suffrage — and his singular vote broke the stalemate. The 19th Amendment became law and on August 26th, the Amendment was formally adopted into the Constitution by proclamation of Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby and women gained the vote in the United States. Notably, despite considerable, decades-long contributions to the suffrage movement by the Black women of America, poll taxes, local laws, and other restrictions continued to block them (as well as Black men) from voting for several decades more.
