history

5. WW I and the 19th Amendment

Prior to the World War I any gains made in the area of women’s suffrage took place on the state level

Some states our west had passed laws granting women the right to vote during the Gilded Age and Progressive era.

These states included Wyoming (1869); Utah (1870); Colorado (1893); and Idaho (1896).

The US entry into World War I provided a unique opportunity for suffrage groups to shift their strategy from a local to a national campaign for a constitutional amendment granting women the vote.

The most important of the groups was the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

A key strategy of NAWSA’s leaders was to increase membership rolls during the war by making patriotism and support of the war central to their platform.

Because of this emphasis on patriotic support of the war effort, NAWSA increased its membership to 2 million people during World War I.

NAWSA’s leaders argued that the cause for justice and peace abroad must begin and home, with women’s full participation in the democratic process.

They urged passage of a women’s suffrage amendment as a war-time measure.

By June of 1919 both houses of Congress approved the Amendment.

After Congress approved the Amendment, states began to ratify the Amendment; the last state that did so was Tennessee, in August of 1920.

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. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

6. Broader Social Changes in America during the 1920s

After World War I during the early 1920s, movies, tabloids, and radio had become major cultural force.

By 1923 there were 600 radio stations nation-wide, and 600,000 Americans owned radios.

An automobile culture emerged; by 1920 there were 8 million cars on the road, by 1929 there were 27 million cars, one for every five Americans.

Cars meant mobility; people could travel to cities, take family vacations, and explore sexuality in a new way.

Middle and working class developed new interests in consumerism and materialism, leisure, and secularism and science.

For many people, newer, broader value system and cultural interests began to replace close-knit immigrant values and culture.

7. The Immigration Act of 1924

Many conservative Americans felt that the masses of impoverished urban immigrant workers somehow shared the blame for rapid changes affecting US society.

“Nativists” associate immigrants with crime, inflation, drain on public resources, labor competition, and radicalism.

One result was when Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924.

It was the first law restricting all immigration to the USA.

It set strict quotas focusing on many Eastern and Southern European immigrants.

According to the law, only 2 percent of a nation’s immigrants who had been in the United States in 1890 could immigrate to America after 1924.

Why did Congress’s commission on immigration choose 1890 as the percent cutoff year?

Because 1890 immediately preceded the era of heaviest immigration to America from Eastern and Southern Europe (especially Italians and Poles).

Prior to 1890 mostly “good” immigrants, from nations like France, England, and Scandinavia had entered America.

For the first time visas and photographs were required of immigrants applying for entry into the US ($18 fee).

The documentation had to be issued by US consulates.

The result was that immigrants from northern and western Europe could enter in larger numbers, while immigrants from eastern and southern Europe were barred from entering.

In terms of statistics, Germany, England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales were providing 62% of all European immigration into the US after the law was passed in 1924.

These immigration quotas remained in place until the 1960s.

However, by this period most immigration to America was coming from “developing” nations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

Responses (Due Monday April 6):

What was a major cause of World War I in Europe?

Why did America finally enter World War I?

How did World War I affect the lives of women and immigrants in America?

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