19th Amendment marks 100 years of women's voting rights

On Aug. 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified, declaring, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the amendment, and organizations across the country are hosting events and celebrations in commemoration.

The term suffrage, which is now defined as the right of voting or the exercise of such right, stems from the Latin, meaning a "vote cast in an assembly, right to vote" according to Merriam Webster.

Women first gained the vote in Wyoming in 1890, just one year after Montana gained statehood. Despite propositions for women's suffrage at the time, women in Montana didn't gain the right to vote until Nov. 3, 1914, with just 53 percent of the male vote. Lewis and Clark County voted against women's suffrage by 53 percent.

Helena was home to The Suffrage Daily News, a newspaper with just seven issues published in 1914. The first issues, printed in September, were published by the Montana Equal Suffrage State Central Committee and distributed during the Montana State Fair and included a special report on the suffrage parade led by Jeannette Rankin down Helena's main street. Rankin, who was the first woman elected to the United States Congress in 1916, four years before women gained the right to vote across the country, was instrumental in Montana's suffrage campaign and later in the national campaign for women's suffrage.

The final issue of The Suffrage Daily News, published by the Butte Equal Suffrage Association, was printed on Nov. 2 in time for the election. Several issues of the paper have been digitized and are available through the Library of Congress's Chronicling America project.

From the first national suffragist convention held in July 1848 in Seneca Falls, NY, to the eventual ratification of the 19th Amendment over 70 years later, the movement brought together supporters from across divides. Among these were the Women's Trade Union League, the National American Woman Suffrage Association -which grew out of two rival groups, the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association - and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

Suffragists employed a variety of techniques to gain the vote nationwide, from holding conventions and gathering petition signatures to testifying before congress and leading protests.

The National Women's Party became the first group to picket the White House, when in early 1917, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns led women in an effort to gain media attention. While the early protests displayed civility, by June of 1917, picketers were arrested. As the year progressed, the violence escalated. Servicemen attacked demonstrators with no police interference. In October of the same year, protesters started receiving sentences from six days (for 73-year-old Mary Nolan on account of her age) to seven months for repeat picketers, including Paul.

One particularly brutal arrest was referred to by the suffrage movement as "The Night of Terror," where guards at Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia kicked and beat prisoners for refusing to put on prison uniforms or work. Many of the women resorted to hunger strikes during their incarceration. The Library of Congress hosts a digital gallery of the "Women of Protest" who were arrested and imprisoned for the suffrage efforts, which includes Hazel Hunkins, the Montana state chairman for the NWP.

An amendment for women's suffrage was first introduced to the Senate by Senator Edgar Cowan in 1866, and defeated 37-9. Over the next fifty years, various iterations of the amendment were proposed and failed, all the way up to February 1919, when the amendment fell one vote short of passing the Senate. The Amendment finally passed both the House and Senate by June 1919 and by August 1920, received ratification by the 36 states needed to support the Amendment.

The Library of Congress, the Smithsonian and the National Archives are using materials from their collections to share 19 suffrage stories during August. They launched the series by lighting up the Library of Congress with the suffrage flag colors of orange and purple. The American Bar Association is hosting author talks, special publications, and sharing resources to share voter registration information, including how to get mail and absentee ballots.