Search

This article examines the history of the 19th Amendment, which secured the right to vote for women. It examines women's participation at the polls since then and considers the possibility and impact of greater numbers of women in public office.

Henry Highland Garnet was an African-American abolitionist, minister, educator and newspaper editor. Garnet delivered “An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America” at the National Negro Convention in Buffalo, N.Y., on Aug. 16, 1843.

Abolitionists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott convened the first women’s rights convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls, N.Y. Their Declaration of Sentiments, modeled after the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, demanded the full rights of citizenship for women.