The woman suffrage movement in the United States started in the mid-nineteenth century. The first women's rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York, on 19 July 1848. In 1869, the National Woman Suffrage Association was formed under the leadership of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in order to agitate for a Constitutional amendment. Also in 1869 the American Woman Suffrage Association was organized under the leadership of Lucy Stone; this association focused on working with state legislatures. The two societies combined to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1890. Among the leaders of the NAWSS was Carrie Chapman Catt.



A number of individual states and territories granted voting rights to women starting with the Wyoming Territory in 1869. A woman suffrage amendment to the Iowa state constitution was on the ballot in the Iowa primary election of June 1916, but the amendment was defeated.



In June 1919, the United States Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteeing that the right to vote could not be denied on account of sex. Nationwide woman suffrage became a reality when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified on 26 August 1920 after Tennessee became the thirty-sixth state to approve the amendment.