get the vote for decades. They’d begun to ques-
tion their subordinate role in society, rallied to
improve women’s rights within marriage, and
called for universal suffrage. They’d ventured
beyond the domestic sphere of their homes and
neighborhoods, into spaces where no “respect-
able” women would go, and had spoken in public
before mixed crowds, which no respectable
women would do. They’d inserted themselves
into a political process that made no room for
them. They’d insisted on what they believed
were their rights as citizens. They’d elevated
women’s voting rights to an issue that national
politicians could no longer ignore.
And yet, they still had a very long road to
travel—a nearly half century–long campaign
to press their cause across the country. The
19th Amendment, which decreed that no citi-
zen could be denied the right to vote based on
sex, became law on August 26, 1920—a tremen-
dous accomplishment. Some 27 million women
became eligible to vote, the largest increase in
potential voters in American history. But the
victory was incomplete: Because of restrictive
state and federal laws such as poll taxes, literacy
tests, and ethnic barriers to citizenship, many
nonwhite women—African Americans, Native
Americans, Latinas, and Asian Americans—still
didn’t have access to the ballot. Nor did many
nonwhite men, despite the 15th Amendment.
It’s easy to consign the suffragists to the past—
to imagine them as severe Susan B. Anthony and104 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC