- [Instructor] We're nearing
the 100th anniversary
of the ratification of the 19th Amendment
which says that 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.
This was the pivotal amendment
that guaranteed the
right to vote for women.
But, as we've learned so far,
having citizenship and
having the right to vote
don't necessarily go hand in hand.
So let's zoom out a bit
from the 19th Amendment
and take a look at
citizenship rights for women,
both before and after the amendment.
Back in 1868, when the
14th Amendment was passed,
it guaranteed citizenship to anyone
born or naturalized in the United States.
White women had been considered citizens
since the country's founding, but now,
after the 14th Amendment, women
of color born on U.S. soil
were included among the ranks of citizens.
But again, this didn't mean
that women had the right to vote.
In 1872, Virginia Minor,
a resident of Missouri,
attempted to register
to vote and was denied.
Her husband sued for them both
because women couldn't bring
suit in Missouri at the time.
The Minors argued that the 14th Amendment
guaranteed Virginia's right to vote,
and the case went all the way
to the Supreme Court in 1875.
In Minor versus Happersett,
Happersett was the name
of the registrar who wouldn't
let Virginia register to vote,
the court issued the ruling
that the right to vote
was not one of the
constitutionally protected rights
of citizenship.
This meant that, for women
to get the right to vote,
they would either have
to get individual states
to permit women to vote
or persuade Congress
to amend the U.S. Constitution.
Women suffragists pursued
both of those strategies.
And, by 1919, when Congress
approved the 19th Amendment,
women had full suffrage in 15
States and partial suffrage,
meaning that they could vote
in some types of elections
but not others, in 20 more states.
The 19th Amendment overturned
Minor versus Happersett
and ensured that women had the
right to vote in every state.
However, there were still ways
that women's citizenship was limited.
For one thing, a woman's
citizenship status
was very much tied up with her husband's.
In the early 20th century,
if an American woman
married a non-citizen, she
lost her U S citizenship.
The reverse was not true.
If an American man married a non-citizen,
he remained a citizen.
This was a relic of the
legal doctrine of coverture,
that a woman's legal rights
were swallowed up by her
husband's when she got married.
In 1922, shortly after the 19th Amendment,
the Cable Act started the process
of disentangling a
woman's citizenship status
from that of her husband.
But it wasn't until 1934
that all of the exceptions
and loopholes were closed.
Jury service was another arena
where women's citizenship rights
took some time to catch up to men's.
Some states tied jury service to voting
so that, when women got the right to vote,
they became eligible to serve as jurors.
But that wasn't the case in every state.
So, even after the 19th
Amendment, women had to fight
for the right to sit on
juries in more than 30 states.
We tend to think of jury duty
as something to get out of,
if at all possible, but it's really
an incredibly important
aspect of citizenship.
It ensures that people
who are accused of a crime
are tried by a jury of their peers.
Not until 1968 did every state
require women to sit on juries.
So how important do you
think the 19th Amendment was
in gaining citizenship rights for women?
What did it change and
what didn't it change?
And why is jury service so
important to citizenship?
