American women at last won the right to vote when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted on this date in 1920.
Among the Jewish women involved in the suffrage movement were Gertrude Weil, a lifelong activist in Goldsboro, North Carolina, who organized suffrage leagues in the 1910s and civil rights actions in the 1960s; Rose Schneiderman, the key organizer for the National American Women Suffrage Association; Ernestine L. Rose, president of the National Women’s Rights Convention of 1854; Hannah Greenbaum Solomon, who convinced the National Council of Jewish Women, which she founded, to support the suffrage cause; and Elizabeth Suchman, who helped create Votes for Women Broadside, a suffragist newspaper in New York City.
“Women in fighting for the vote have shown a passion of earnestness, a persistence, and above all a command of both tactics and strategy, which have amazed our master politicians. A new force has invaded public life.” —New York Times ratification editorial