Women Get the VOTE.

• Author: Weiss, Elaine

The 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified 100 years ago this summer. Here are six things you should (but might not) know about the women's suffrage movement.

When women's rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton stood to speak at a meeting in the little town of Seneca Falls, New York, on a summer day in 1848, no one could foresee that her words might help spark one of the great grassroots movements for social justice in American history. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," Stanton read aloud, "that all men and women are created equal."

Her addition of "and women" to the most famous line of the Declaration of Independence kickstarted a revolution--the struggle for women's suffrage. That campaign would continue for more than seven decades, finally forcing a change to the U.S. Constitution--the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote. This August will mark the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Here are some lesser-known truths about the suffrage movement.

1 'We the people' didn't initially mean all the people.

When the Framers of the Constitution wrote those memorable opening words in 1789, setting up our system of representative government, citizens' right to vote was never guaranteed. The Constitution gave each state control over voter qualifications, and at first the states allowed only property-owning white men to vote in elections. A rare exception was New Jersey, which initially allowed women to vote but took the ballot away from them in 1807.

By the mid-19th century, states had dropped property requirements for white men. African American men were granted the vote by the 15th Amendment in 1870, though "Jim Crow" laws and other racist state policies prevented black men in the Southern states from exercising their right to vote for almost another century.

Women in a few states--mostly in the West--won the right to vote by campaigning for changes to state election laws. By 1918, women had gained full voting rights in 15 states, including California, Illinois, and New York. But campaigns to secure the vote for women in many other states failed. Most American women had to wait until 1920 for the 19th Amendment to the Constitution to grant them the right to vote.

2 The women's rights movement grew out of the campaign to abolish slavery.

The women we know as the founders of the suffrage movement--Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott--began their political activism as abolitionists, writing and speaking publicly about the evils of slavery in the mid-19th century. They maintained that both enslaved people and women were oppressed under American law.

Women's suffrage activists and abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass--who had escaped slavery and become a leading voice in the anti-slavery movement--worked hand in hand through the Civil War (1861-65). Their goal was universal suffrage--granting the vote to enslaved black men and all women, black and white.

"All good causes are mutually helpful," Douglass once said. "The benefits accruing from this movement for the equal rights of woman are not confined or limited to woman only."

After the war, however, women's rights activists were told that the nation couldn't handle two big reforms at once, and only black men would be given the vote by the 15th Amendment, leaving both white and black women out of the expansion of voting rights. Some white suffrage leaders refused to support the 15th Amendment if it didn't include women and expressed their anger at being left behind with racist language.

Race remained a divisive issue in the women's suffrage movement. Black women were very active advocates for the vote, but they were often not welcomed in white women's suffrage clubs. So, they organized their own.

3 Suffragists had to be brave-and creative--in their fight for the vote.

Suffragists had to be strong: They were considered outrageous and dangerous not only because they demanded equal rights as citizens, but also because they were challenging society's attitudes toward women and girls. They were ridiculed and bullied, criticized as "unladylike" and ugly, denounced as radicals and misfits, and called...