1848
The first women's rights convention is held in Seneca Falls, New York. There, 68 women and 32 men sign a Declaration of Sentiments, which modeled on the Declaration of Independence, outlines grievances and sets the agenda for the women's rights movement. A set of 12 resolutions is adopted calling for equal treatment of women and men under the law and voting rights for women.
1850
The first National Women's Rights Convention takes place in Worcester, Massachusetts, attracting more than 1,000 participants. Frederick Douglass, Paulina Wright Davis, Abby Kelley Foster, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucy Stone and Sojourner Truth are in attendance.
1851
At a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio, Sojourner Truth, a former slave, delivers her now memorable speech, “Ain't I a woman?”
1861
The Civil War begins in the United States and women’s rights advocacy grinds to a halt until the war ends in 1865.
1866
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony form the American Equal Rights Association, an organization for white and black women and men dedicated to the goal of universal suffrage. They petition Congress for “universal suffrage.”
1868
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” and that right may not be “denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States.”
1868
Senator S.C. Pomeroy of Kansas introduces a federal women’s suffrage amendment in Congress. It is rejected.
1869
The suffragists split into two organizations. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association. The primary goal of the organization is to achieve voting rights for women by means of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and others form the American Woman Suffrage Association, which focuses exclusively on gaining voting rights for women through the individual states.
1870
The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified: “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 race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
1871
Victoria Woodhull addresses the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, arguing that women have the right to vote under the 14th Amendment. The committee rejects her argument.
1871
The Anti-Suffrage Party is founded. Many people, including prominent women, such as Ellen Sherman, wife of General William Tecumseh Sherman, challenged the notion of suffrage as a “natural right,” and opposed its extension to women. In their view, women’s political participation threatened their important roles as wives, mothers, educators, and philanthropists.
1872
Susan B. Anthony registers and votes for Ulysses S. Grant in the presidential election in New York. She is arrested, tried, and convicted in 1873. Her defense, that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment entitled her to vote, was not successful.
1874
The Supreme Court rules in Minor v. Happersett that the 14th Amendment does not guarantee women the right to vote. Citizenship does not give women voting rights, and women’s political rights are under individual states’ jurisdictions, the Court determines.
1876
Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage disrupt the official U.S. Centennial program at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, presenting a “Declaration of Rights for Women.”
1878
California Senator A.A. Sargeant introduces the Woman Suffrage Amendment into Congress. It includes the language that would eventually become the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
1890
The National Women Suffrage Association and the American Women Suffrage Association merge to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. As the movement's mainstream organization, NAWSA wages state-by-state campaigns to obtain voting rights for women.
1896
The National Association of Colored Women is formed with the goal of achieving equality for women of color. The association brings together more than 100 black women's clubs. Leaders include Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, Mary Church Terrell, and Anna Julia Cooper.
1911
The National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage (NAOWS) is organized.
1912
Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party becomes the first national major political party to support women’s suffrage.
1913
Suffragists organize a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. Known as the Woman Suffrage Procession, it was the first public demonstration in the nation’s capital for women’s suffrage and called participants to “march in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society, from which women are excluded.”
1913
Alice Paul and Lucy Burns form the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage. Their focus is lobbying for a federal constitutional amendment to secure the national right to vote for women.
1915
Mabel Vernon and Sara Bard Field lead a transcontinental tour which gathers over 500,000 signatures on petitions to Congress in favor of women’s suffrage.
1916
Alice Paul and her colleagues rename the Congressional Union the National Woman's Party (NWP) and began introducing some of the methods used by the suffrage movement in Britain. Tactics include demonstrations, parades, mass meetings, and picketing the White House over the refusal of President Woodrow Wilson and other incumbent Democrats to actively support the Suffrage Amendment.
1916
Jeannette Rankin of Montana is the first woman elected to the House of Representatives. Woodrow Wilson states that the Democratic Party platform will support suffrage.
1917
United States enters World War I.
1917
Picketers are arrested on charges of “obstructing traffic,” during a demonstration. Alice Paul and others are convicted and incarcerated at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia. While imprisoned, Alice Paul begins a hunger strike and is forcibly fed a mixture of eggs and milk for nutrition.
1918
In January, after much bad press about the treatment of Alice Paul and the other imprisoned women, and the country still at war in World War I, President Wilson announces that women's suffrage is urgently needed as a "war measure." World War I ends in November.
1919
The Woman Suffrage Amendment, originally written by Susan B. Anthony and introduced in Congress in 1878, is passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate. It is then sent to the states for ratification. Wisconsin and Illinois are the first states to ratify.
1920
The League of Women Voters forms
1920
After Tennessee becomes the 36th state to ratify, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution is certified as law, granting American women the national right to vote.
1920
Its work completed, the NAWSA disbands.