Women’s Suffrage, the Nineteenth Amendment, and the Expansion of Voting Rights in the United States

The fifth annual Murray State University Spring History continues at the Calloway County Public Library on Sunday, March 2, 2020, at 2:00 pm with Dr. James S. Humphreys’ lecture entitled Women’s Suffrage, the Nineteenth Amendment, and the Expansion of Voting Rights in the United States.

The eighty-year push for women’s voting rights in the United States that culminated in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. The expansion of suffrage rights began in the United States during the antebellum era, when the elimination of property qualifications allowed a large number of white men to vote, and, later, when the fifteenth amendment provided for African American suffrage. Although the right to vote is the most important privilege in a democratic republic, women’s suffrage proved to be a dream deferred until 1920.

The issue of women’s suffrage, freighted with gender, racial, and political undertones, was controversial to many Americans, sewing divisions among not only men but also women. Some women supported the Nineteenth Amendment, while others opposed it. The same could be said for progressive reformers and politicians. More dramatic critics of the amendment even warned that women’s suffrage boded ill for the stability of the United States. The Nineteenth Amendment enfranchised one-half of the population and forever altered the landscape of American politics.

James S. Humphreys is a professor of history at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky, where he specializes in the history of the American South. Humphreys completed a Ph.D. in history in 2005 at Mississippi State University. He is the author of Francis Butler Simkins: A Life, published by the University of Florida Press in 2008 in a book series titled “New Perspectives on the History of the South.” Humphreys also serves as co-editor of the Interpreting American History series, published by Kent State University Press.

The lecture series is presented free of charge, and all interested community members are invited to attend.