19th Amendment

Ko Bragg, a reporter for the 19th, breaks down how suffragette is still a work in process in the fight for equal rights for Black and transgender women.

It was a huge step forward for American women when, exactly 100 years ago, they finally gained the guaranteed right to vote with ratification of the 19th Amendment. But to Alice Paul, the step wasn’t nearly large enough.

Ida B. Wells was in Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1913 with thousands of other women for a parade spearheaded by one of the country’s leading suffragists, Alice Paul. Wells was representing the Alpha Suffrage Club, the first Black suffrage club in Chicago that she founded two months before. At the rehearsal, she learned that the white organizers...

Suffragists fighting for the right to vote 100 years ago found themselves hemmed in by the Spanish flu of 1918, their rallies and other gatherings cancelled as they tried to convince lawmakers of their cause. Historians celebrating the milestone this year during the coronavirus pandemic have a new appreciation for what those women accomplished.