Women in the United States got the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in August 1920. The amendment legally guaranteed American women the right to vote, but it took decades of agitation and protest to achieve this milestone. The campaign for woman suffrage was long, difficult, and required a lengthy struggle. Women organized, petitioned, and picketed to win the right to vote, but it took them decades to accomplish their purpose. Between 1878, when the amendment was first introduced in Congress, and August 18, 1920, when it was ratified, champions of voting rights for women worked tirelessly, but strategies for achieving their goal varied. Some pursued a strategy of passing suffrage acts in each state, while others worked towards a constitutional amendment.

It is worth noting that New Jersey recognized womens right to vote in 1797, but women were stripped of their voting rights in 1807 when the state passed a law allowing only free white males the right to vote. In 1869, Wyoming territory granted women the right to vote motivated less by gender equality and in large part by the hope that the law would attract women to the territory which had a 6:1 men to women ratio. The territories of Utah, Washington, and Montana were among the first and passed womens voting rights during the 1870s and 1880s.

It is important to note that even after the passage of the 19th Amendment, millions of people, including women and men, were still excluded from the vote, as many barriers to suffrage remained. For example, Native Americans in some states were considered "wards of the state" and werent guaranteed the right to vote until the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Discrimination against "language minorities," including those who speak Asian, American Indian, Alaska Native, and Spanish languages, was also ended by the 1975 extension of the Voting Rights Act.