-As we saw in the first two episodes of "The Fight,"
American women fought for decades
in the 1800s for the right
to vote at the state and the national level,
but they hadn't won it yet.
In the 1910s, though, a new, younger,
more radical generation of women's rights activists
breathed new life into the fight.
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One of these women was Alice Paul,
a young Quaker who had studied in England
at the time that suffragists there were throwing rocks
through windows and getting arrested.
After getting a taste for this brand of activism,
Alice Paul returned to the United States
and decided to make the fight for suffrage her life's work.
In 1913, Paul helped organize a pro-suffrage march
of 5,000 women
down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.
Old divides between black and white suffragists,
though, had not disappeared.
Alice Paul in the National American
Women's Suffrage Association, or NAWSA,
had made the decision to sideline black suffragists
in their work to win the support of white Southern voters.
Black suffragists like Ida B. Wells-Barnett
we're told they would have to march
at the back of the parade.
Wells-Barnett was a journalist
who had written a groundbreaking book
on lynching as a tool of political and social control.
She had to flee the South under threat of white violence
and became a leader in the fight for civil rights
and rights for women.
In 1913, she founded the Alpha Suffrage Club
to promote the cause of suffrage
among black women in Chicago.
at the parade in Washington, D.C.,
Wells-Barnett had expected to march
with the Illinois delegation.
When asked to march at the back of the parade,
she refused to do so, telling her state's delegation,
"Either I go with you or not at all."
And so she marched with them, whether they liked it or not.
Marching down Pennsylvania Avenue,
a crowd of around 100,000 people turned violent.
Furious men began to push into the parade and attack the women.
The police didn't stop them, and around 100 women
ended up in hospital.
This caused outrage in the press
and won new sympathy for the cause.
And the parade ended up overshadowing
President Wilson's inauguration.
Once Wilson took office, suffragists worked tirelessly
to try and win his support.
The leader of NAWSA, Carrie Chapman Catt,
wrote letters and visited with the president.
Alice Paul and her friends, though, we're not so civil
and were expelled from the national organization
after being too critical of the president.
Paul started her own organization
and decided to picket the White House.
Nowadays, there's always someone protesting
outside the White House.
But in 1917, it had never been done before
and it was extremely scandalous.
At first, Wilson seemed amused by the lady protesters.
But after a few days when it seemed clear
they weren't going anywhere, they began to get under his skin
when the US entered World War I,
Paul decided to continue the White House picket.
The protesters used Wilson's own words
about making the world safe for democracy
to lobby for their cause.
This was seen as treasonous behavior by many Americans.
The women of NAWSA distanced themselves from the protesters,
thinking they would set back the whole suffrage movement.
The picketers, including Paul,
were arrested over and over again
and received increasingly severe punishments
in the workhouse where they were imprisoned.
Paul and others went on hunger strike,
protesting the unsanitary conditions of the jail.
They demanded to be treated with respect as political prisoners.
Instead, they were force fed, shackled, and beaten.
This created a media sensation.
Woodrow Wilson did not want suffragist blood on his hands
in the midst of a war.
The women were released
and the superintendent was investigated
for inhumane treatment.
As the 1918 midterm election approached, Woodrow Wilson
needed to retain Democratic control of Congress.
He realized he would not be able to
if the Democrats were opposed to suffrage.
He also needed to prove to the rest of the world
that he was a leader in the cause of democracy.
American women were supporting the war effort
both at home and in Europe,
and the tide of public opinion had finally shifted.
Wilson expressed support for a national amendment
extending women the right to vote.
He said, "The war could not have been fought by America
if it had not been for the services of women."
It took all parts of the women's movement to win Wilson
and the nation over to the cause of suffrage.
It took Carrie Chapman Catt's relentless
but polite lobbying in Washington.
It took the public outrage
over Alice Paul's treatment in prison,
and it took the enormous network of black women's organizations
to rally black men with the vote to support the cause.
At Wilson's urging,
Congress passed the 19th Amendment June 1919.
It took another year for the necessary 36 states
to ratify the amendment.
It was a tall order, especially since most Southern states
were opposed to the amendment.
In fact, Mississippi didn't ratify it until 1984,
but they only needed 36 states
to make the 19th Amendment law.
The 36th state to ratify was Tennessee on August 18, 1920.
It almost didn't happen,
but one state legislator changed his mind
at the very last minute after receiving a telegram
from his mother telling him to be a good boy
and help Mrs. Catt.
The struggle for the 19th Amendment
was not simple or pretty or totally peaceful.
Its passage also didn't mean
that all women could actually vote.
Native Americans didn't win the right to vote
until 1948,
and even then they were blocked from voting in some states
until 1962.
Chinese immigrants could not become citizens or vote
until 1943.
And it wasn't until the 1965 Voting Rights Act
that black Americans in the South
could attain full citizenship and voting rights,
nearly a century after the passage of the 15th Amendment.
Even today, the right to vote is not a given.
Laws regarding voter registration
and voter ID make it harder to vote in some states.
The fight for the vote has been a long one,
and it isn't over yet.
♪♪