Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Happy 19th Birthday
On this date 89 years ago, one-half of the U.S. population gained the legal right to vote. Prior to August 18, 1920, only men were entitled to vote, and usually only white men were permitted to vote. Upon passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, some 130 years after the founding of the Republic, woman gain the legal right to vote. It would take the passage of the National Voting Rights Act of 1965 before concerted effort was made to extend the practical right to vote to non-whites.