| 1837 | Young teacher Susan B. Anthony asked for equal pay for women teachers. |
| 1848 | July 14: call to a woman’s rights convention appeared in a Seneca County, New York, newspaper.
July 19-20: Woman’s Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, New York, issuing the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments |
| 1850 | October: first National Woman’s Rights Convention was held in Worcester, Massachusetts. |
| 1851 | Sojourner Truth defends woman’s rights and “Negroes’ rights” at a women’s convention in Akron, Ohio. |
| 1855 | Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell married in a ceremony renouncing the legal authority of a husband over a wife, and Stone kept her last name. |
| 1866 | American Equal Rights Association to join causes of black suffrage and women’s suffrage |
| 1868 | New England Woman Suffrage Association founded to focus on woman suffrage; dissolves in a split in just another year.
15th Amendment ratified, adding the word “male” to the Constitution for the first time. January 8: first issue of The Revolution appeared. |
| 1869 | American Equal Rights Association splits.
National Woman Suffrage Association founded primarily by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. November: American Woman Suffrage Association founded in Cleveland, created primarily by Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Julia Ward Howe. December 10: the new Wyoming territory includes woman suffrage. |
| 1870 | March 30: 15th Amendment adopted, prohibiting states from preventing citizens from voting because of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” From 1870 – 1875, women attempted to use the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause to justify voting and the practice of law. |
| 1872 | Republican Party platform included a reference to woman suffrage.
Campaign was initiated by Susan B. Anthony to encourage women to register to vote and then vote, using the Fourteenth Amendment as justification. November 5: Susan B. Anthony and others attempted to vote; some, including Anthony, are arrested. |
| June 1873 | Susan B. Anthony was tried for “illegally” voting. |
| 1874 | Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) founded. |
| 1876 | Frances Willard became the leader of the WCTU. |
| 1878 | January 10: The “Anthony Amendment” to extend the vote to women was introduced for the first time in the United States Congress.
First Senate committee hearing on the Anthony Amendment. |
| 1880 | Lucretia Mott died. |
| 1887 | January 25: The United States Senate voted on woman suffrage for the first time — and also for the last time in 25 years. |
| 1887 | Three volumes of a history of the woman suffrage effort were published, written primarily by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Mathilda Joslyn Gage. |
| 1890 | American Woman Suffrage Association and National Woman Suffrage Association merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
Matilda Joslyn Gage founded the Women’s National Liberal Union, reacting to the merger of the AWSA and NWSA. Wyoming admitted to the union as a state with woman suffrage, which Wyoming included when it became a territory in 1869. |
| 1893 | Colorado passed by referendum an amendment to their state constitution, giving women the right to vote. Colorado was the first to amend its constitution to grant woman suffrage.
Lucy Stone died. |
| 1896 | Utah and Idaho passed woman suffrage laws. |
| 1900 | Carrie Chapman Catt became president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. |
| 1902 | Elizabeth Cady Stanton died. |
| 1904 | Anna Howard Shaw became president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. |
| 1906 | Susan B. Anthony died. |
| 1910 | Washington State established woman suffrage. |
| 1912 | The Bull Moose / Progressive Party platform supported woman suffrage.
May 4: Women marched up Fifth Avenue in New York City, demanding the vote. |
| 1913 | Women in Illinois were given the vote in most elections — the first state East of the Mississippi to pass a woman suffrage law.
Alice Paul and allies formed the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, first within the National American Woman Suffrage Association. May 4: About 5,000 paraded for woman suffrage up Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. |
| 1914 | The Congressional Union split from the National American Woman Suffrage Association. |
| 1915 | Carrie Chapman Catt elected to presidency of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. |
| 1916 | The Congressional Union recreated itself as the National Woman’s Party. |
| 1917 | National American Woman Suffrage Association officers meet with President Wilson. (photo)
National Woman’s Party began picketing the White House. June: Arrests began of pickets at the White House. Montana elected Jeannette Rankin to the United States Congress. |
| 1918 | January 10: House of Representatives passed the Anthony Amendment but the Senate failed to pass it.
March: A court declared invalid the White House suffrage protest arrests. |
| 1919 | May 21: United States House of Representatives passed the Anthony Amendment again.
June 4: United States Senate approved the Anthony Amendment. |
| 1920 | August 18: Tennessee legislature ratified the Anthony Amendment by a single vote, giving the Amendment the necessary states for ratification.
August 24: Tennessee governor signed the Anthony Amendment. August 26: United States Secretary of State signed the Anthony Amendment into law. |
| 1923 | Equal Rights Amendment introduced into the United States Congress, proposed by the National Woman’s Party. |
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