August 18: Nineteenth Amendment

On this day in 1920, Tennessee narrowly ratified the Nineteenth Amendment thereby adding women’s suffrage to the U.S. Constitution. The Nineteenth Amendment was first introduced in Congress in 1878 by Senator Aaron A. Sargent (R-CA). It was identical to the Fifteenth Amendment, except that the Nineteenth prohibits the denial of suffrage because of sex and the Fifteenth because of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Forty-one years later, it was finally approved by Congress and submitted to the states for ratification.