On August 18, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, granting women the right to vote. The Amendment specifically prohibits both state and federal government from denying any citizen the right to vote because of that citizen’s sex.

The first suffrage bill was brought before the House of Representatives in January 1915, but was lost by a vote of 174 to 204. In January 1918, President Woodrow Wilson announced his support of an amendment to grant women suffrage, and a bill was brought before the House again. The House of Representatives then narrowly passed the amendment, but the Senate refused to debate it until later in the year. When the Senate voted on the amendment in October, it failed by only three votes.

In response to this failure, the National Woman’s Party urged citizens to vote against anti-suffrage Senators up for reelection in the 1918 midterm elections. Their strategy worked, and following those elections, most members of Congress were pro-suffrage. Further, there was anxiety among politicians of both parties to have the amendment passed and made effective before the general elections of 1920. In May 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment by a vote of 304 to 89 and the Senate, after three previous failures, finally passed the bill in June, by a vote of 56 to 25.

On August 18, 1920, the Tennessee General Assembly, by a one-vote margin, became the thirty-sixth state to ratify the proposed amendment, thus making it the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.