A Century of Suffrage Trivia Quiz

Answer: Seneca Falls, New York

The Seneca Falls convention took place in July 1848. The women's rights movement grew out of the abolition movement. The first convention was organized largely by female Quaker abolitionists.

The key organizers at the Seneca Falls convention included Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Amelia Bloomer and Mary Ann McClintock. Abolition leader Frederick Douglass was an important early supporter of women's suffrage.

The Women's Rights National Historic Park preserves the site of the first convention. It was established in 1980. The NHP is one of the key sites along the Votes for Women History Trail, which includes sites in Rochester and Waterloo, New York.

There was a followup to the Seneca Falls convention in Worcester in 1850. The Ohio Women's Rights convention took place in Akron in May 1851; it is most notable for Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I A Woman" speech. The 1853 Women's Rights convention was held in Cleveland. The movement held annual conventions between 1850 and 1860.

Answer: 1878

Senator Sargent, a friend of Susan B Anthony, introduced the language that would ultimately become the 19th amendment in January 1878. The bill was hamstrung in Congress for 40 years.

Sargent moved to California in 1849, and was elected to the House of Representatives in 1861 and later in 1869. Sargent served in the Senate from 1873 to 1879. Towards the end of his life, he served as Ambassador to Germany. He died in San Francisco in 1887.

Answer: Wyoming

In an effort to draw more women to the region, legislators in the west began granting women the right to vote. The first place was the Wyoming Territory in 1869. Wyoming still uses "The Equality State" as its nickname to recognize this.

Women in Utah were given the right to vote in 1870, but had it taken away by Congress in 1887. They got it back again in 1895. Women gained the right to vote in Colorado in 1893. Washington State passed women's suffrage in 1910. By the time the 19th amendment passed, women had full voting rights in 15 states, mostly in the western states. They could vote for president in 13 others, mostly in the Midwest.

Answer: Indiana

Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan were in a virtual race to pass the 19th Amendment. All three states passed it on June 10, 1919, only a week after it had passed the US Senate. Indiana was fairly late in the game, voting to ratify on January 16, 1920.

The House first passed the 19th Amendment in January 1918, but it failed to pass the Senate that year. The House passed it again in May 1919, and the Senate passed it on June 4 on a vote of 56-25.

Answer: Tennessee

Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to ratify on August 18. Washington was the penultimate state, ratifying on March 22, 1920. Connecticut would ratify a month after Tennessee, on September 14 and 21st. Vermont ratified on February 8, 1921.

By the summer of 1920, 35 states had passed the 19th amendment, leaving supporters one state short of passage. The Tennessee State Senate had passed the amendment, leaving the State House of Representatives as the final hurdle. The chamber was divided 48 to 48 until a young legislator, Harry Burn, switched his vote at the urging of his mother. Burn did get reelected following his vote, but lost in the 1922 election. He became an attorney and eventually returned to the State Senate in 1949. Burn died in 1977.

Answer: Carrie Chapman Catt

Carrie Chapman Catt was born in 1859 and died in 1947. She was born in Wisconsin and grew up in Iowa, graduating from Iowa State. Catt worked as a teacher and journalist before become active in the suffrage movement in the 1880s.

Cady Stanton and Anthony were leaders of the National Women's Suffrage Association. Stanton died in 1902 and Anthony died in 1906. Anna Howard Shaw worked closely with Stanton and Anthony. She was both a physician and one of the first female ordained Methodist ministers in the United States. Shaw died in July 1919, only weeks after Congress passed the amendment.

Answer: 36 percent

Turnout of women voters in 1920 was at 36 percent, while men turned out at 68 percent. There were a variety of reasons for low turnout, including women being unfamiliar with the process and some women who felt it was not proper to vote. Warren G Harding won the presidential election of 1920, and polling showed that women did not vote significantly differently than men.

One effect of women winning the vote was the passage of the Sheppard-Towner Act in 1921. The bill provided pre-natal care and health clinics for women and children. It was the first federally-funded social welfare program.

Answer: Louis Brandeis

Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130 was decided in February 1922. A native of Maryland named Oscar Leser challenged the right of women to vote in Maryland, claiming that the 19th amendment had not been correctly ratified. The court struck down each of Lesser's arguments on technical grounds, thereby opening the way for all American women to vote.

Louis Brandeis served on the court from 1916 to 1939. He is regarded as having one of the finest minds in American legal history. Brandeis was known as "the Robin Hood of law" who fought for social justice against monopolies and corporate greed. Justice Brandeis was one of the foremost advocates of freedom of speech and privacy in US judicial history.

Taft was Chief Justice at the time. He had served as president from 1909 to 1913, before losing to Woodrow Wilson. Holmes served from 1902 to 1932, and was known for his sharp wit in opinions. McKenna was a member of Congress and served as Attorney General for William McKinley before serving on the court from 1898 to 1925.

Answer: Libertarian

Tonie Nathan (1923 - 2014) ran as the vice presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party with John Hospers in 1972. She is also the first Jewish person to receive an electoral vote. While their ticket only received 3674 votes, they did receive one electoral vote when Republican elector Roger McBride of Virginia chose to vote for Hospers and Nathan.

Theodora Nathalia Nathan was a businesswoman from California who moved to Oregon to become a television producer. After her vice presidential run, Nathan made several bids for elective office in Oregon, none of them successful.

Geraldine Ferraro was the first Democratic woman to win electoral votes (13 as Vice President in 1984) and Sarah Palin was the first Republican woman (173 as Vice President in 2008). No Green Party candidate had won electoral votes through 2016, although Jill Stein did receive 1.4 million votes in the 2016 election,

Answer: Mississippi

While all of these states took their time in voting to give women the right to vote, Mississippi was dead last. In the wake of the failure of the ERA, the Mississippi legislature finally got around to passing the 19th amendment on March 22, 1984. Perhaps more remarkably, it took Mississippi until 1995 to pass the 13th amendment, which ended slavery.

North Carolina ratified on May 6, 1971. Louisiana ratified on June 11, 1970. Georgia ratified on February 20, 1970.