YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE A TIMELINE OF EVENTS THAT HAVE CHANGED AMERICA
A M E R I CA’ S E L E C T I O N H E A D Q UA RT E R S
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Our interactive exhibits, live performances, rare artificats, and hands-on activities bring the Constitution to life for visitors of all ages. We also offer special themed programs on civic holidays (Veterans Day, Presidents Day, and Independence Day – just to name a few) that the whole family can enjoy.
FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT
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RACE /// 3
NINETEENTH AMENDMENT SEX /// 11
TWENTY-SIXTH AMENDMENT AGE /// 19
YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE /// 4
FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT GRANTED AFRICAN AMERICAN MEN THE RIGHT TO VOTE IN 1870.
BUT THAT WAS JUST THE START.
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THE UNION VICTORY IN THE CIVIL WAR MAY HAVE GIVEN SOME 4 MILLION SLAVES THEIR FREEDOM. BUT THE PROCESS OF REBUILDING THE SOUTH DURING THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD INTRODUCED A NEW SET OF SIGNIFICANT CHALLENGES.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION When the American Civil War (186165) began, President Abraham Lincoln carefully framed the conflict as concerning the preservation of the Union rather than the abolition of slavery. Although he personally found the practice of slavery abhorrent, he knew that neither Northerners nor the residents of the border slave states would support abolition as a war aim. But by mid-1862, as thousands of slaves fled to join the invading Northern armies, Lincoln was convinced that abolition had become a sound military strategy, as well as the morally correct
path. On September 22, soon after the Union victory at Antietam, he issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that as of January 1, 1863, all slaves in the rebellious states “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” While the Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave, it was an important turning point in the war, transforming the fight to preserve the nation into a battle for human freedom.
CIVIL WAR ENDS In an event that is generally regarded as marking the end of the Civil War, Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of Confederate forces west of the Mississippi, signs the surrender terms offered by Union negotiators. With Smith’s surrender, the last Confederate army ceased to exist, bringing a formal end to the bloodiest
four years in U.S. history. The American Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate shore batteries under General Pierre G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay. During 34 hours, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly supplied fort, and on April 13 U.S. Major Robert Anderson, commander of the Union garrison, surrendered. Two days later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to help quell the Southern “insurrection.” Four long years later, the Confederacy was defeated at the total cost of 620,000 Union and Confederate dead.
CIVIL WAR ENDS APRIL 9, 1865
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMTION JANUARY 1, 1863 President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."
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General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered his Confederate troops, one of the last to do so, on May 26, 1865 to Union General E. R. S. Canby.
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CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1866 The Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27-30, enacted April 9, 1866, was the first United States federal law to define US citizenship and affirm that all citizens are equally protected by the law. It was mainly intended to protect the civil rights of Africans born in or brought to America, in the wake of the American Civil War. This legislation was enacted by Congress in 1865 but vetoed by President Andrew Johnson. In April 1866 Congress again passed the bill. Although Johnson again vetoed it, a two-thirds majority in each house overcame the veto and the bill therefore became law. John Bingham and some other congressmen argued that Congress did not yet have sufficient constitutional power to enact this law. Following passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, Congress reenacted the 1866 Act in 1870.
eliminate a discriminatory “badge of servitude” prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment. John A. Bingham, principal author of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, was one of several Republicans who believed (prior to that Amendment) that Congress lacked power to pass the 1866 Act. In the 20th century, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately adopted Trumbull’s Thirteenth Amendment rationale for congressional power to ban racial discrimination by states and by private parties, in view of the fact that the Thirteenth Amendment does not require a state actor.
the constitutional power of Congress to do that was more questionable. For example, Congressman William Lawrence argued that Congress had power to enact the statute because of the Privileges and Immunities Clause in Article IV of the original unamended Constitution, even though courts had suggested otherwise.
To the extent that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 may have been intended to go beyond preventing discrimination, by conferring particular rights on all citizens,
*620,000 UNION AND CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS DEAD
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*4 MILLION SLAVES FREED *4 YEARS OF BATTLE
Senator Lyman Trumbull was the Senate sponsor of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and he argued that Congress had power to enact it in order to
CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1866 APRIL 9, 1866 Senator Lyman Trumball was the Senate sponsor of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and he argued that Congress had power to enact it in order to eliminate discrimination.
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THE NINETEEN HUNDREDS /// AFTER DECADES OF DISCRIMINATION, THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965 AIMED TO OVERCOME LEGAL BARRIERS AT BOTH THE STATE AND LOCAL LEVELS THAT DENIED BLACKS THEIR RIGHT TO VOTE UNDER THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// THE N.A.A.C.P. Founded in 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was one of the earliest and most influential civil rights organization in the United States. During its early years, the NAACP focused on legal strategies designed to confront the critical civil rights issues of the day. They called for federal anti-lynching laws and coordinated a series of challenges to state-sponsored segregation in public schools, an effort that led to the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared the doctrine of “separate but equal” to be unconstitutional. Though other civil rights groups emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, the NAACP retained a prominent role within the movement, co-organizing the 1963 March on Washington, and successfully lobbying
for legislation that resulted in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Act. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909-1910 in New York City by a group of white and black intellectuals. United in their opposition to the gradualism preached by Booker T. Washington, the NAACP leaders sought, first, to make whites aware of the need for racial equality. To do this, the organization launched a program of speechmaking, lobbying, and publicizing the issue. It also started a magazine, the Crisis, which was edited for years by the black leader W. E. B. Du Bois. At the same time, the NAACP attacked segregation and racial inequality through the courts. It won a Supreme Court decision in 1915 against
the grandfather clause (used by many southern states to prevent blacks from voting) and another in 1927 against the all-white primary.
BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY Malcolm X, the activist and outspoken public voice of the Black Muslim faith, challenged the mainstream civil rights movement and the nonviolent pursuit of integration championed by Martin Luther King Jr.He urged followers to defend themselves against white aggression “by any means necessary.” Born Malcolm Little, he changed his last name to X to signify his rejection of his “slave” name. Charismatic and eloquent, Malcolm became an influential leader of the Nation of Islam, which combined Islam with black nationalism and sought to encourageand
THE N.A.A.C.P. FEBRUARY 12, 1909 W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the founding leaders of The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909.
BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY FEBRUARY 21, 1960
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Malcolm X Born Malcolm Little, he changed his last name to X to signify his rejection of his “slave” name. Charismatic and eloquent, Malcolm became an influential leader of the Nation of Islam.
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enfranchise disadvantaged young blacks searching for confidence in segregated America. After Malcolm X’s death in 1965, his bestselling book The Autobiography of Malcolm X popularized his ideas, particularly among black youth, and laid the foundation for the Black Power movement of the late 1960s and 1970s.
PEACEFUL PROTESTS Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and social activist who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. Inspired by advocates of nonviolence such as Mahatma Gandhi, King sought equality for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and victims of injustice through peaceful protest. He was the driving force behind watershed events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington, which helped bring about such landmark legislation as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is remembered each year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a U.S. federal holiday. In his role as SCLC president, Martin Luther King Jr. traveled across the country and around the world, giving lectures on nonviolent protest and civil rights as well as meeting with religious figures, activists and political leaders.
PEACEFUL PROTESTS AUGUST 28, 1963 Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Baptist minister and social activist who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s.
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THE TWO THOUSANDS /// AMERICA FACES MORE RACIAL ISSUES IN THE NEW CENTURY, BOTH HIGH AND LOW. THE FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN PRESIDENT ENTERS THE OVAL OFFICE, WHILE POLICE BRUTALITY IS BROUGHT INTO THE LIMELIGHT. MORE VOTING RESTRICITIONS ARE ALSO PUT INTO PLACE.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// A NEW PRESIDENT On November 4, 2008, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was elected president of the United States over Senator John McCain of Arizona. Obama became the 44th president, and the first African American to be elected to that office. He was subsequently elected to a second term over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
the historic nature of his win while reflecting on the serious challenges that lay ahead. “The road ahead will be long, our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there.”
On November 4, lines at polling stations around the nation heralded a historic turnout and resulted in a Democratic victory, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Taking the stage in Chicago’s Grant Park with Michelle and their two young daughters, Malia and Sasha, Obama acknowledged
A NEW PRESIDENT NOVEMBER 4, 2008 Barack Obama was the first African American elected president of the United States. This marks a huge milestone in American culture.
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TIME FOR REFORM From Freddie Gray in Baltimore to Walter Scott in South Carolina to the more than 100 people tortured and framed over two decades in Chicago, the issue of police abuse has finally started to permeate the national discourse. But even as regular headlines reveal fresh abuses, many officers continue to take shelter behind the use-of-force framework for police interactions, suffering few or no negative consequences for excessive use of force.
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There are roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States. Most of them operate relatively autonomously, yet officers are shielded in the same way in most states and jurisdictions. Spurred by the growing national movement against police brutality, lawmakers and activists have started looking for solutions that would hold police officers more accountable for the use of force. On Friday, President Obama’s new Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that the Justice Department would investigate the Baltimore Police Department to
determine whether there had been systemic civil rights violations by officers. But given the sheer number of law enforcement agencies in the country, the DOJ doesn’t have nearly enough resources to investigate all of them. Between close relationships with prosecutors, secretive police culture, and laws that protect officers from taking personal responsibility for their actions, the obstacles to police reform are stifling.
TIME FOR REFORM AUGUST 9, 2014 Ferguson protestors march for police and civil reform following the death of Mike Brown.
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NINETEENTH AMENDMENT WOMEN NOW HAD THE RIGHT TO VOTE IN AMERICA.
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BUT INEQUALITY STILL EXISTED IN EVERY PART OF LIFE.
ON ELECTION DAY IN 1920, MILLIONS OF AMERICAN WOMEN EXERCISED THEIR RIGHT TO VOTE. BUT IT TOOK ACTIVISTS AND REFORMERS NEARLY 100 YEARS TO WIN THAT RIGHT, AND THE CAMPAIGN FOR VOTER EQUALITY WAS NOT EASY.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// THE SUFFRAGISTS The campaign for women’s suffrage began in earnest in the decades before the Civil War. During the 1820s and 30s, most states had extended the franchise to all white men, regardless of how much money or property they had. At the same time, all sorts of reform groups were proliferating across the United States– temperance clubs, religious movements and moral-reform societies, anti-slavery organizations–and in many of these, women played a prominent role. Meanwhile, many American women were beginning to chafe against what historians have called the “Cult of True Womanhood”: that is, the idea that the only “true” woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family. Put together, all of these contributed to a new
way of thinking about what it meant to be a woman and a citizen in the United States. In 1848, a group of abolitionist activists– mostly women, but some men–gathered in Seneca Falls, New York to discuss the problem of women’s rights. (They were invited there by the reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.) Most of the delegates agreed: American women were autonomous individuals who deserved their own political identities. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” proclaimed the Declaration of Sentiments that the delegates produced, “that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain
inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” What this meant, among other things, was that they believed women should have the right to vote.
“THIS HOUR BELONGS TO THE NEGRO” During the 1850s, the women’s rights movement gathered steam, but lost momentum when the Civil War began. Almost immediately after the war ended, the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution raised familiar questions of suffrage and citizenship. (The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, extends the Constitution’s protection to all citizens–and defines “citizens”
THE SUFFRAGISTS MAY 15, 1869 Elizabeth Cady Stanton was one of the founding leaders of The National Woman Suffrage Association.
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as “male”; the 15th, ratified in 1870, guarantees black men the right to vote.) Some woman-suffrage advocates, among them Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, believed that this was their chance to push lawmakers for truly universal suffrage. As a result, they refused to support the 15th Amendment and even allied with racist Southerners who argued that white women’s votes could be used to neutralize those cast by African-Americans. In 1869, this faction formed a group called the National Woman Suffrage Association and began to fight for a universal-suffrage amendment to the federal Constitution. Others argued that it was unfair to endanger black enfranchisement by tying it to the markedly less popular campaign for female suffrage. This pro-15th-Amendment faction formed a group called the American Woman Suffrage Association and fought for the franchise on a state-by-state basis.
THE PROGRESSIVE CAMPAIGN This animosity eventually faded, and in 1890 the two groups merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. (Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the organization’s first president.) By then, the suffragists’ approach had changed. Instead of arguing that women deserved the same rights and responsibilities as men because women and men were “created equal,” the new generation of activists argued that women deserved the vote because they were different from men. They could make their domesticity into a political virtue, using the franchise to create a purer, more moral “maternal commonwealth.” This argument served many political agendas: Temperance advocates, for instance, wanted women to have the vote because they thought it would mobilize an enormous voting bloc on behalf of their cause, and many middle-class white people were swayed once again by the argument that the
enfranchisement of white women would “ensure immediate and durable white supremacy, honestly attained.”
THE LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS The League of Women Voters was founded by Carrie Chapman Catt in 1920 during the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The convention was held just six months before the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, giving women the right to vote after a 72-year struggle. The League began as a “mighty political experiment” designed to help 20 million women carry out their new responsibilities as voters. It encouraged them to use their new power to participate in shaping public policy. From the beginning, the League has been an activist, grassroots organization whose leaders believed that citizens should play a critical role in advocacy.
PROGRESSIVE CAMPAIGN FEBRUARY 14, 1890 Carrie Chapman Catt was the founder of the League of Women Voters designed to help 20 million women carry out their responsibilites as new voters.
“THIS HOUR BELONGS TO THE NEGRO” MARCH 12, 1870 Lucretia Mott was an abolitionist, a women’s rights activist, and a social reformer. She helped write the Declaration of Sentiments during the Seneca Falls Convention.
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THE NINETEEN HUNDREDS /// AT THE TIME THE U.S. WAS FOUNDED, ITS FEMALE CITIZENS DID NOT SHARE ALL OF THE SAME RIGHTS AS MEN, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO VOTE. IT WAS NOT UNTIL 1848 THAT THE MOVEMENT FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS LAUNCHED ON A NATIONAL LEVEL.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// THE LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS
IMPROVED WORKING CONDITIONS
The League of Women Voters was founded by Carrie Chapman Catt in 1920 during the convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The convention was held just six months before the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, giving women the right to vote after a 72-year struggle.
Women working in factories often faced terrible working conditions and low wages. During the Progressive Era, working-class women, alone and in concert with middleclass women, fought to raise wages and improve working conditions. The National Women’s Trade Union League of America (NWTUL) was established in Boston, MA in 1903, at the convention of the American Federation of Labor.
The League began as a “mighty political experiment” designed to help 20 million women carry out their new responsibilities as voters. It encouraged them to use their new power to participate in shaping public policy. From the beginning, the League has been an activist, grassroots organization whose leaders believed that citizens should play a critical role in advocacy.
It was organized as a coalition of workingclass women, professional reformers, and women from wealthy and prominent families. Its purpose was to “assist in the organization of women wage workers into trade unions and thereby to help them secure conditions necessary for healthful and efficient work and to obtain a just reward for such work.”
Perhaps most importantly, the WTUL emerged as the central meeting place for reform-minded women interested in labor issues, and it was through the WTUL that many of these women cultivated important political relationships. Eleanor Roosevelt became an active league member in 1922, cementing her ties to figures like Rose Schneiderman and Margaret Dreier Robins.
WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE Ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote—a right known as woman suffrage. At the time the U.S. was founded, its female citizens did not share all of the same rights as men, including the right to vote. It was not until 1848 that the movement for women’s rights launched on a national level with a convention in
FDA APPROVES THE PILL MAY 9, 1960
IMPROVED WORKING CONDITITOINS MAY 15, 1903 Elizabeth Cady Stanton was one of the founding leaders of The National Woman Suffrage Association.
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Margaret Sanger was an early women’s activist for female birth control availability.
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Seneca Falls, New York, organized by abolitionists Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) and Lucretia Mott (1793-1880). Following the convention, the demand for the vote became a centerpiece of the women’s rights movement. Stanton and Mott, along with Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) and other activists, formed organizations that raised public awareness and lobbied the government to grant voting rights to women. After a 70year battle, these groups finally emerged victorious with the passage of the 19th Amendment.
FDA APPROVES THE PILL The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves the world’s first commercially produced birth-control bill–Enovid-10, made by the G.D. Searle Company of Chicago, Illinois.
Development of “the pill,” as it became popularly known, was initially commissioned by birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger and funded by heiress Katherine McCormick. Sanger, who opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States in 1916, hoped to encourage the development of a more practical and effective alternative to contraceptives that were in use at the time. In the early 1950s, Gregory Pincus, a biochemist at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, and John Rock, a gynecologist at Harvard Medical School, began work on a birth-control pill. Clinical tests of the pill, which used synthetic progesterone and estrogen to repress ovulation in women, were initiated in 1954. On May 9, 1960, the FDA approved the pill, granting greater reproductive freedom to American women.
N.O.W. By October, some 300 women and men had become charter members. The organizing conference was October 29-30 in Washington, D.C., but only 30 of the 300 charter members participated. NOW’s flair for making a few seem like many may have begun with this first formal meeting. The slate of officers was elected as nominated, including Kathryn (Kay) Clarenbach as Chair of the Board, Betty Friedan as President, Aileen Hernandez— who had announced her impending resignation from the EEOC—in absentia as Executive Vice President, Richard Graham as Vice President, and Caroline Davis as Secretary/Treasurer.
N.O.W. OCTOBER 29, 1960 Betty Friedan was the president of the National Organization for Women.
THE TWO THOUSANDS /// ALTHOUGH WOMEN HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE, GENDER INEQUALITY IS STILL A MAJOR ISSUE IN THE UNITED STATES. WOMEN ARE CONSTANTLY BATTLING FOR PAY AND WORK EQUALITY.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// GENDER INEQUALITY On the heels of the International Women’s Day March for Gender Equality, the He for She and Planet 50-50 by 2030 Campaigns and the twentieth anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, international advocates and officials alike are coming together to evaluate the progress that has been made over the past several years. This raises the question: what is the current status of women in the United States? The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR )-- in partnership with a multitude of organizations including the Ford Foundation, the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network, and the Center for American Progress -- just released the 2015 edition of its project on the Status of Women in the States, with newly updated data and trend analyses on women’s
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economic, social and political progress in the United States. The findings? Although we have indeed experienced progress toward gender equity, it’s likely that we won’t see equal pay for American women within our lifetime. (For more on this topic, see this post by Roosevelt Fellow Andrea Flynn.) The road to achieving gender equality in the U.S. is quite clearly checkered with significant potholes. Over the next several weeks, IWPR will be releasing a series of reports that include data on U.S. women’s employment and earnings, poverty and opportunity, work and family, violence and safety, reproductive rights, health and wellbeing and political participation. The data and trend analyses found in these
reports can be explored by topic and differing demographics (women of color, older women, immigrant women and Millennials, to name a few), as well as on a national or state level. The first two chapters on employment and earnings and poverty and opportunity have already been released, revealing a number of insights on the state of women within this country. Some highlights: In just about every state in the country, Millennial women are more likely than Millennial men to have a college degree, yet Millennial women also have higher poverty rates and lower earnings than Millennial men. Although more women are receiving high school diplomas and completing college than ever before, a considerable proportion of women either do not graduate high
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school or finish their education with only a high school diploma. By the time a collegeeducated woman turns 59, she will have lost almost $800,000 throughout her life due to the gender wage gap. There are incredibly large disparities throughout different regions of the United States; southern women are the worst off with regard to employment and earnings. Furthermore, the status of women differs notably by race and ethnicity, with Hispanic women having the lowest median annual earnings compared to other women. In general, women’s economic security is directly linked to their family income, which includes earnings from jobs, but women tend to be concentrated in fields that lead to jobs with relatively low wages. Even women who do go into higher-paying fields still earn less than their male peers. This helps explain why, in 2013, about 14.5 percent of women ages 18 and older had family incomes that placed them below the federal poverty line, compared with 11 percent of men. However, even this estimate does not fully capture the extent of the hardship that women continue to face in the U.S.
GENDER INEQAULITY 2000s Michelle Obama fights for gender equality in America and the rest of the world.
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TWENTY-SIXTH AMENDMENT LEGAL VOTING AGE IN AMERICA IS NOW EIGHTEEN.
BUT THAT WAS JUST THE START.
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THE FIGHT TO LOWER THE VOTING AGE FROM 21 TO 18 BEGAN DURING WORLD WAR II. AND ONLY INTENSIFIED DURING THE VIETNAM WAR. IF MEN AND WOMEN WERE OLD ENOUGH TO DIE FOR THEIR COUNTRY, THEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO VOTE FOR THEIR COUNTRY.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// OLD ENOUGH TO FIGHT During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt lowered the minimum age for the military draft age to 18, at a time when the minimum voting age (as determined by the individual states) had historically been 21. “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote” became a common slogan for a youth voting rights movement, and in 1943 Georgia became the first state to lower its voting age in state and local elections from 21 to 18. Jennings Randolph, then a Democratic congressman from West Virginia, introduced federal legislation to lower the voting age in 1942; it was the first of 11 times that Randolph, who was later elected to the Senate, would introduce such a bill in Congress. The driving force behind Randolph’s efforts was his faith in America’s youth, of whom he believed:
“They possess a great social conscience, are perplexed by the injustices in the world and are anxious to rectify those ills.”
CONGRESSIONAL SUPPORT Dwight D. Eisenhower, who led the U.S. armed forces to victory in Europe in 1945, later became the first president to publicly voice his support for a constitutional amendment lowering the minimum voting age. In his 1954 State of the Union address, Eisenhower declared: “For years our citizens between the ages of 18 and 21 have, in time of peril, been summoned to fight for America. They should participate in the political process that produces this fateful summons.” In the late 1960s, with the United States embroiled in a long, costly war in Vietnam, youth voting rights activists
OLD ENOUGH TO FIGHT NOVEMBER 11, 1942 Young men protested the lowering of the military draft age. If young men were forced to fight for their country, they should be allowed to vote for their country.
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held marches and demonstrations to draw lawmakers’ attention to the hypocrisy of drafting young men and women who lacked the right to vote. In 1969, no fewer than 60 resolutions were introduced in Congress to lower the minimum voting age, but none resulted in any action. The following year, when Congress passed a bill extending and amending the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it contained a provision that lowered the voting age to 18 in federal, state and local elections. Though he signed the bill into law, President Richard M. Nixon issued a public statement declaring that he believed the provision to be unconstitutional. “Although I strongly favor the 18-year-old vote,” Nixon continued, “I believe–along with most of the Nation’s leading constitutional scholars–that Congress has no power to
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enact it by simple statute, but rather it requires a constitutional amendment.”
OREGON V. MITCHELL In the 1970 case Oregon v. Mitchell, the U.S. Supreme Court was tasked with reviewing the constitutionality of the provision. Justice Hugo Black wrote the majority decision in the case, which held that Congress did not have the right to regulate the minimum age in State and local elections, but only in federal elections. The issue left the Court seriously divided: Four justices, not including Black, believed Congress did have the right in state and local elections, while four others (again, not including Black) believed that Congress lacked the right even for federal elections, and that under the Constitution only the states have the right to set voter qualifications. Under this verdict, 18- to 20-year-olds would be eligible to vote for president and vice president, but not for state officials up for election at the same time. Dissatisfaction with this situation–as well
as public reaction to the protests of large numbers of young men and women facing conscription, but deprived of the right to vote–built support among many states for a Constitutional amendment that would set a uniform national voting age of 18 in all elections.
26TH AMENDMENT PASSED On March 10, 1971, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously in favor of the proposed amendment. After an overwhelming House vote in favor on March 23, the 26th Amendment went to the states for ratification. In just over two months– the shortest period of time for any amendment in U.S. history–the necessary three-fourths of state legislatures (or 38 states) ratified the 26th Amendment, and President Nixon signed it into law that July. At a White House ceremony attended by 500 newly eligible voters, Nixon declared: “The reason I believe that your generation, the 11 million new voters,
will do so much for America at home is that you will infuse into this nation some idealism, some courage, some stamina, some high moral purpose, that this country always needs.” Though newly minted young voters were expected to choose Democratic challenger George McGovern, an opponent of the Vietnam War, Nixon was reelected by an overwhelming margin–winning 49 states–in 1972. Over the next decades, the legacy of the 26th Amendment was a mixed one: After a 55.4 percent turnout in 1972, youth turnout steadily declined, reaching 36 percent in the 1988 presidential election. Though the 1992 election of Bill Clinton saw a slight rebound, voting rates of 18- to 24-year-olds remained well behind the turnout of older voters, and many lamented that America’s young people were squandering their opportunities to enact change. The 2008 presidential election of Barack Obama saw a voter turnout of some 49 percent of 18- to 24.
OLD ENOUGH TO FIGHT MARCH 15, 1943 Teen Protestors fought to lower the voting age from 21 to 18. If these teenagers were old enough to fight for their country, they should be able to vote for their country.
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TOGETHER, WE MUST STAND AS ONE TO FIGHT THE SOCIAL INJUSITICE IN AMERICA. SO MANY BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN HAVE FOUGHT TO BRING EQUALITY TO AMERICA, THROUGH VOTING RIGHTS, CIVIL RIGHTS, AND SOCIAL REFORM.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Voting equality and civil rights are still an active issue in the United States. We must march with Martin Luther King, Jr., stand with Margaret Sanger, and speak up with students across the country. We, as Americans, need to stand up to this injustice and uphold the Consitution of the United States of America. There is need for change, which we will see one day in the future. To find more information and to help end social injustice, visit www.constitutioncenter.org/civilrights.
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YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE /// 24
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