California has a profound connection to the national suffrage campaign. In 1896, women in California lost their first contest for the right to vote. Then, after years of advocacy and lobbying voters throughout the state, more than a decade later on Election Day October 10, 1911, the measure narrowly passed by only 3,587 votes. With the passage of votes for women in California, the number of women with full suffrage in the U.S. doubled, and San Francisco became the most populous city in the world in which women could vote.

Passed by Congress on June 4, 1919 and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19^th Amendment declares, “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.”

In the following years, the convention’s leaders continued to campaign for women’s rights at state and nationwide events. As the movement continued to gain momentum, anti-slavery and women’s rights advocates forged powerful partnerships. The suffrage movement was largely mirrored after the tactics and strategies implemented in the abolitionist movement – but after the Civil War, political expedience and racism divided the movement. 

When the 19^th Amendment became law on August 26, 1920, millions of women were eligible to vote, but many women of color were prevented from casting ballots for decades because of poll taxes, literacy tests, overt racism, intimidation, and laws that prevented the grandchildren of slaves from voting. Native American, Asian American, Latinx, and African American suffragists had to fight for their own enfranchisement long after the 19^th Amendment was ratified.   

Native Americans were not recognized as citizens until the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act, also known as the Snyder Act. Even with the passing of this citizenship bill, Native American women were still prevented from participating in elections because the Constitution left it up to the states to decide who has the right to vote.  Asian Americans also experienced considerable legal obstacles until the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act removed barriers to citizenship. 

On March 7, 1965 state troopers violently attacked peaceful marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama; the national attention along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism persuaded President Lyndon Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Voting Rights Act applied a nationwide prohibition against the denial or abridgment of the right to vote by literacy tests, or any other measures. 

As we collectively commemorate the strides we have made as a nation, let us also remember that we still have work to do. Voter suppression is still a tactic used today to disenfranchise voters. These tactics disproportionately affect women of color, transgender women, women with disabilities, as well as, immigrants, people of low socio-economic status, and the formerly incarcerated.