Women’s suffrage is the right of women to vote and to hold an elected office.

When did women get the right to vote?

Women have always had the right to vote, but this is far from the truth. Up until the 1900s, most democracies throughout history only allowed men to vote. This includes the democracies of Ancient Greece, the Roman Republic, and early democracies in Britain and the United States.

In the United States, women were not allowed to vote until the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920. That’s less than 100 years ago. In some countries, the date was much later, such as in Kuwait where women weren’t given the right to vote until 2005. In other countries, the date was earlier, as in New Zealand which pioneered women’s suffrage in 1893.

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History of Women’s Suffrage in the United States

Gaining equal rights for women including the right to vote in the United States was a long and slow process. The first real fight for women’s suffrage came out of the antislavery movement by the abolitionists in 1840s and 50s. These people felt that not only should slavery come to an end, but that all people should be treated equal regardless of race or gender.

Seneca Falls Convention

The first women’s rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. Around 300 people attended the meeting which was led by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The main outcome of the meeting was the “Declaration of Sentiments”, a document similar to the Declaration of Independence. It stated that women should have equal rights to men including the right to vote.

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National Women’s Suffrage Association

In 1869, women leaders Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Women’s Suffrage Association. The main goal of this group was to get an amendment passed that would allow women to vote. They wanted the 15th amendment to include the right for women to vote as well as people of any race. However, the 15th amendment passed in 1870 allowing all men regardless of race to vote, but not women.

Another women’s suffrage group was formed in 1869 called the American Woman Suffrage Association. The leaders of this group included Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and Henry Blackwell. The two groups disagreed on whether to support the 15th amendment without the right for women to vote.

In 1894, the two groups merged under the leadership of Susan B. Anthony and became the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Their main goal was to get the 19th amendment passed.

Gaining the Right to Vote in States

Although women did not have the right to vote from the federal government, they began to make progress in certain states and territories. In 1869, the Wyoming Territory granted the right to vote to women. Later, in 1890, Wyoming only agreed to join the Union as a state if women would be allowed to vote.

In 1893, Colorado became the first state to adopt an amendment that granted women voting rights. Soon other western states followed including Utah and Idaho in 1896 and Washington State in 1910. More and more states began to make amendments to their constitution and the momentum for the passage of the 19th amendment grew in the early 1900s.

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The 19th Amendment

In 1917, the National Women’s Party was formed to help fight for women’s rights. Leaders such as Alice Paul and Lucy Burns organized protests in Washington. At the time, President Woodrow Wilson was against the 19th amendment. Alice Paul was arrested and sent to jail where she held a hunger strike. In 1918, President Wilson changed his mind and decided to support the amendment and on August 26, 1920 the 19th Amendment was signed into law.

The Text of the 19th Amendment

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.

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As World War II came to an end in 1945, a pair of Allied peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam determined the fate of Germany’s territories. They split the defeated nation into four “allied occupation zones”: The eastern part of the country went to the Soviet Union, while the western part went to the United States, Great Britain and (eventually) France.

On October 22, 1961, a quarrel between an East German border guard and an American official on his way to the opera in East Berlin very nearly led to what one observer called “a nuclear-age equivalent of the Wild West Showdown at the O.K. Corral.” That day, American and Soviet tanks faced off at Checkpoint Charlie for 16 hours. Photographs of the confrontation are some of the most familiar and memorable images of the Cold War.

Even though Berlin was located entirely within the Soviet part of the country, the Yalta and Potsdam agreements split the city into similar sectors. The Soviets took the eastern half, while the other Allies took the western. This four-way occupation of Berlin began in June 1945.

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THE BERLIN WALL: BLOCKADE AND CRISIS

The existence of West Berlin, a conspicuously capitalist city deep within communist East Germany, “stuck like a bone in the Soviet throat,” as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev put it. The Russians began maneuvering to drive the United States, Britain, and France out of the city for good. In 1948, a Soviet blockade of West Berlin aimed to starve the western Allies out of the city. Instead of retreating, however, the United States and its allies supplied their sectors of the city from the air. This effort, known as the Berlin Airlift, lasted for more than a year and delivered more than 2.3 million tons of food, fuel, and other goods to West Berlin. The Soviets called off the blockade in 1949.

After a decade of relative calm, tensions flared again in 1958. For the next three years, the Soviets–emboldened by the successful launch of the Sputnik satellite the year before and embarrassed by the seemingly endless flow of refugees from east to west (nearly 3 million since the end of the blockade, many of them young skilled workers such as doctors, teachers and engineers)–blustered and made threats, while the Allies resisted. Summits, conferences, and other negotiations came and went without resolution. Meanwhile, the flood of refugees continued. In June 1961, some 19,000 people left the GDR through Berlin. The following month, 30,000 fled. In the first 11 days of August, 16,000 East Germans crossed the border into West Berlin, and on August 12 some 2,400 followed—the largest number of defectors ever to leave East Germany in a single day.

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THE BERLIN WALL: BUILDING THE WALL

Premier Khrushchev gave the East German government permission to stop the flow of emigrants by closing its border for good. In just two weeks, the East German army, police force, and volunteer construction workers had completed a makeshift barbed wire and concrete block wall–the Berlin Wall–that divided one side of the city from the other.

Before the wall was built, Berliners on both sides of the city could move around fairly freely: They crossed the East-West border to work, to shop, to go to the theater and the movies. Trains and subway lines carried passengers back and forth. After the wall was built, it became impossible to get from East to West Berlin except through one of three checkpoints: at Helmstedt (“Checkpoint Alpha” in American military parlance), at Dreilinden (“Checkpoint Bravo”) and in the center of Berlin at Friedrichstrasse (“Checkpoint Charlie”). (Eventually, the GDR built 12 checkpoints along the wall.) At each of the checkpoints, East German soldiers screened diplomats and other officials before they were allowed to enter or leave. Except under special circumstances, travelers from East and West Berlin were rarely allowed across the border.

THE BERLIN WALL : 1961-1989

The construction of the Berlin Wall did stop the flood of refugees from East to West, and it did defuse the crisis over Berlin. (Though he was not happy about it, President Kennedy conceded that “a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.”) Over time, East German officials replaced the makeshift wall with one that was sturdier and more difficult to scale. A 12-foot-tall, 4-foot-wide mass of reinforced concrete was topped with an enormous pipe that made climbing over nearly impossible. Behind the wall on the East German side was a so-called “Death Strip”: a gauntlet of soft sand (to show footprints), floodlights, vicious dogs, trip-wire machine guns and patrolling soldiers with orders to shoot escapees on sight.

In all, at least 171 people were killed trying to get over, under or around the Berlin Wall. Escape from East Germany was not impossible, however: From 1961 until the wall came down in 1989, more than 5,000 East Germans (including some 600 border guards) managed to cross the border by jumping out of windows adjacent to the wall, climbing over the barbed wire, flying in hot air balloons, crawling through the sewers and driving through unfortified parts of the wall at high speeds.

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THE BERLIN WALL: THE FALL OF THE WALL

On November 9, 1989, as the Cold War began to thaw across Eastern Europe, the spokesman for East Berlin’s Communist Party announced a change in his city’s relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country’s borders. East and West Berliners flocked to the wall, drinking beer and champagne and chanting “Tor auf!” (“Open the gate!”). At midnight, they flooded through the checkpoints.

More than 2 million people from East Berlin visited West Berlin that weekend to participate in a celebration that was, one journalist wrote, “the greatest street party in the history of the world.” People used hammers and picks to knock away chunks of the wall–they became known as “Mauer Specht E,” or “wall woodpeckers”—while cranes and bulldozers pulled down section after section. Soon the wall was gone and Berlin was united for the first time since 1945. “Only today,” one Berliner spray-painted on a piece of the wall, “is the war really over.”

The reunification of East and West Germany was made official on October 3, 1990, almost one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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The first settlers probably came to Britain during the Paleolithic age. In the year 43 AD Britain was invaded by the Romans and made a part of the Roman Empire till the year 400 AD. The United Kingdom is presently ruled by Queen Elizabeth-II.

Around 500 AD Christian missionaries arrived in Britain and Christianity spread as a religion. In the last quarter of the 9^th century Britain was invaded by the Vikings. The Invasion of Britain by William and Conqueror in 1066 altered the course of British history.

With William’s victory the system of feudalism was abolished. Under this system land was given to powerful Lords and Barons in exchange for which they agreed to remain loyal to the King and fight for him in wars. The United Kingdom is still ruled by the descendants of William the Conqueror.

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In the year 1215 an agreement called the ‘Magna Carta’ was signed between the noblemen and the King. This agreement ensured that the king would justfully tax the nobles.

In 1282 Wales was conquered by Edward-I and brought under English control.

In the following years British navy grew in might and the British ruled the seas and trade flourished with distant lands. In 1588 the British took on the might of the Spanish Armada and defeated them.

Between 1642 and 1649 there was a civil war between the King and the Parliament in which the king was defeated and executed. For the next nine years the country was ruled as a Republic by Oliver Cromwell, the Parliamentary leader.

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Charles-II however overthrew Cromwell and became king in 1660. In year 1707 Wales, Scotland and England were united and in 1801 Ireland was united to form the United Kingdom. The one of the smallest, the United Kingdom became the most powerful country within fifty years of its formation.

By 1850 the United Kingdom controlled the largest empire in history. The countries controlled by British still form the Commonwealth of Nations.

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