Great Gatsby, The: 19th Amendment

The Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution states: “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.” The amendment was initially introduced in Congress in 1878. Finally approved by the necessary two-thirds majority in each house of Congress forty years later, it was sent to the states for ratification. In 1920 the amendment became a reality when Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to ratify it. From the founding of the nation, it had taken more than a century for women to secure a constitutionally protected federal right to vote.

Twenty-six million women were enfranchised, and a battle for women's suffrage that began at the Seneca Falls Woman's Rights Convention in 1848 finally was won.

Historical newspaper published on August 18, 1920, the day the 19th Amendment was passed granting all US women access to the voting poll.