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  • Becoming Free and Independent States
  • • Disagreement and Disillusion
  • • The Revolution Begins
  • • Fighting the Revolution
  • Forming a More Perfect Union
  • Securing the Blessings of Liberty
  • The Thirteenth Amendment
  • • A Number of Valuable Slaves
  • • Death or Liberty
  • • Forever Free
  • The Fourteenth Amendment
  • • The Law
  • • Drawing the Color Line
  • • Education
  • • Protest
  • The Fifteenth Amendment
  • The Nineteenth Amendment
  • • In Most Humble Manner
  • • All Men and Women Are Created Equal
  • • Far-reaching Changes
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The Nineteenth Amendment

Women in the United States began agitating in the 1840s for the right to vote, long before all men in Virginia had gained the right to vote. The woman suffrage movement, which succeeded in 1920 with the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment, coincided with major national reform movements seeking to improve public education, create public health programs, regulate business and industrial practices, and establish standards and create agencies to ensure pure food and public water supplies. Public debate on these issues and simultaneous demands for better roads and public services transformed politics in Virginia yet again and brought into the political process people who had not been active participants earlier.

In Most Humble Manner: Women and Politics before 1920

Virginia women were involved in many aspects of public life long before gaining the right to vote in 1920. Women were energetic volunteers and able fund-raisers. They petitioned the General Assembly seeking legislative action, financial aid, and divorce. As early as the 1840 presidential election, they were active in political campaigns and participated in debates on the most important issues of the day—among them slavery and temperance.

All Men and Women Are Created Equal: The National Woman Suffrage Movement

The woman suffrage movement began in 1848 at the first woman's rights convention, which was held in Seneca Falls, New York, with the participants calling for political equality and the right to vote. As the movement gained more support throughout the country, it also brought about a great deal of public scrutiny. Many questioned how women would be able to continue completing their domestic duties in the private sphere while participating in the public sphere.

Far-reaching Changes: Virginia’s Woman Suffrage Movement

In 1909 a group of Richmond women formed the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia. The League argued that Virginia women were citizens and taxpayers, that they had special interests that were being poorly addressed by male legislators, and that the spheres of home and world overlapped. Although Virginia women gained the right to vote in 1920 with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Virginia General Assembly did not ratify the amendment until 1952.

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