As the United States entered World War I, pressure to recognize the right of women to vote increased. After the war, women launched a national campaign that included huge parades, demonstrations, picketing, and civil disobedience in Washington, D.C. The Nineteenth Amendment was finally adopted in 1920.

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Women in the United States gained the right to vote only in small increments. Plenty of excuses were offered for not recognizing the right of women to vote.

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In 1869 Wyoming, while still a territory, gave women the right to vote. By 1918 more than half the states had enfranchised women.

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The road to winning the right to vote for women was long, and suffragists faced many setbacks.

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During the middle years of the nineteenth century the struggle for freedom and equality for African Americans was closely linked to the campaign for woman suffrage. Many abolitionists worked for woman suffrage, just as many women worked to end slavery.

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Literacy tests were designed to disenfranchise African American voters. They did not disappear entirely until 1970.

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Poll taxes were meant to keep the poor and minorities from voting. The Twenty-Fourth Amendment ended poll taxes in 1964.

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Until discriminatory laws and Supreme Court rulings took effect, millions of African Americans were added to the voting rolls, and some were elected to public office.

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In theory, the Fifteenth Amendment granted the right to vote to African American men. But discriminatory laws, physical intimidation, and economic reprisals kept African Americans from exercising that right.

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Mexican American men faced discrimination and violence in Texas when they tried to exercise their right to vote.

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