Which U.S. constitutional amendment granted American women the right to vote nationwide?

The Nineteenth Amendment granted American women the constitutional right to vote nationwide.

Congress approved the amendment in 1919, and Tennessee became the decisive thirty-sixth state to ratify it on August 18, 1920. The amendment was formally certified on August 26, a date now commemorated in the United States as Women’s Equality Day.

Its text prohibits the federal government and the states from denying or abridging a citizen’s voting rights on account of sex. The amendment followed decades of organizing by women’s suffrage activists, including Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ida B. Wells, and Carrie Chapman Catt.

The amendment did not immediately eliminate every barrier to voting. Many Black women, Native American women, Asian American women, and other women continued to face discriminatory laws, citizenship restrictions, intimidation, or unequal enforcement. Later civil-rights laws addressed some of those obstacles.