Unfortunately, this was the reality before the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States in 1920. For 72 years women worked hard to give women the right to vote.

Eventually, the amendment would be interpreted to apply most provisions in the Bill of Rights to the states as ... actions by the states. It also gave Congress the power to enforce the amendment ...

The 15th Amendment gave African-American men the right to vote ... Virginia, or to the District of Columbia jail. When some of them went on a hunger strike, they were force-fed via a tube jammed ...

Although the 19th Amendment declared that the right to vote cannot be denied on the basis of sex, it did not guarantee voting access to all women. Citizenship laws, poll taxes, threats, and violence ...