The Reconstruction Amendments and Women’s Suffrage

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The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Shortly after the Civil War, Congress proposed three amendments to the Constitution known as the Reconstruction Amendments that aimed to safeguard African-Americans’ civil rights. These are the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, which abolished slavery;1 the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, defining the concept of national citizenship and guaranteeing due process and equal protection of the laws to all persons;2 and the Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibiting the federal and state governments from restricting a U.S. citizen’s eligibility to vote on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” 3 The states’ ratification of amendments that aimed to protect African-Americans’ civil rights brought new attention to issues of women’s rights and suffrage.4

Debates over the Reconstruction Amendments led to disagreements within the women’s suffrage movement. In particular, during congressional debates over the Fifteenth Amendment, the movement’s leaders divided over whether to support an amendment that granted African-American men the right to vote but did not address women’s suffrage.5 Believing that the Constitution should not grant voting rights to African-American men unless it also recognized women’s suffrage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony split from the American Equal Rights Association they had founded in 1866 and formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869.6 NWSA focused its efforts on obtaining federal legislation or a constitutional amendment recognizing women’s suffrage.7 Later in 1869, women’s rights activists who supported the Fifteenth Amendment’s adoption, including Lucy Stone, founded the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA).8 AWSA generally adopted a state-by-state approach to seeking voting rights.9

Although NWSA and AWSA would later merge in 1890, some women’s rights leaders increasingly excluded African-Americans from participation in suffrage events in an effort to gain southern White voters’ support.10 In 1896, African-American women formed a national organization, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), with Mary Church Terrell as its first president.11 NACW advocated for women’s voting rights and other issues important to African-American women.12

1: See Amdt13.1 Overview of Thirteenth Amendment, Abolition of Slavery.
2: See Amdt14.1 Overview of Fourteenth Amendment, Equal Protection and Rights of Citizens.
3: See Fifteenth Amendment: Right of Citizens to Vote.
4: Sandra Day O’Connor, The History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 49 Vand. L. Rev. 657, 660–61 (1996).
5: Sharon Harley, African-American Women and the Nineteenth Amendment, Nat’l Park Serv. (Apr. 10, 2019), https://www.nps.gov/articles/african-american-women-and-the-nineteenth-amendment.htm. Congressional debates over the Fourteenth Amendment also touched upon issues of women’s suffrage. As ratified, the Fourteenth Amendment did not specifically address women’s suffrage, but Section 2 generally penalized states that restricted the voting rights of “male inhabitants” who were citizens at least twenty-one years of age by reducing the states’ congressional representation. See U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 2, superseded in part by id. amend. XIX.
6: The Women’s Rights Movement, 1848–1917, U.S. House of Rep., https://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/WIC/Historical-Essays/No-Lady/Womens-Rights/ (last visited Feb. 10, 2023).
7: Id.
8: Id.
9: Id.
10: Harley, supra note 5.
11: Id.
12: Id.