Our game lets you follow the 19th Amendment’s journey from passage in the Senate to ratification by 36 states.
On June 4,1919, the Susan B. Anthony Amendment came before the Senate. It was the fifth time that the proposal — first introduced in 1878, and already approved by the House of Representatives — had been put to senators; four months earlier, it had fallen short by just one vote. But on this day, the federal lawmakers voted 56 to 25, to pass the law, amend the constitution and establish women’s right to vote in the United States. The passage of the 19th Amendment was a huge victory for the suffrage movement, the culmination of activism spanning nearly a century as women fought for a voice in the political system. But their work was unfinished. After Congress, the amendment moved to the 48 state legislatures, three-quarters of whom had to ratify it for it to become law. The race to 36 was on. Suffragists had been laying the groundwork for this fight for decades. Many of their early victories had been statewide suffrage measures: In fact, women in 27 states, along with the Alaska Territory, had some form of voting rights before the 19th Amendment. Thanks to those campaigns, organizations such as the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) had chapters across the country, with organizers ready to rally support.
