The Nineteenth Amendment prohibited the United States and its states from denying the right to vote on the basis of sex.
Congress approved the amendment in 1919, and Tennessee became the required thirty-sixth state to ratify it on August 18, 1920. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the ratification on August 26, 1920. The amendment is widely associated with the culmination of the national woman suffrage movement.
The amendment’s language addressed sex discrimination in voting, but it did not automatically give every woman an equal practical ability to vote. Many Black women and other women of color still faced discriminatory state laws, intimidation, violence, literacy tests, poll taxes, and other barriers. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 later strengthened federal protection against racial discrimination in voting.
The Nineteenth Amendment is also distinct from the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited denying voting rights based on race for male citizens, and the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, which lowered the voting age to eighteen.