Women's Suffrage Maps from Ball State University Libraries Mark 19th Amendment Anniversary

Mapping Women’s Suffrage on the Anniversary of the 19th Amendment

Today, August 18, marks the 90th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution. The amendment prohibited the state and federal government from denying any citizen the right to vote because of gender, thus giving many women in the United States the right to vote.

Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment on August 18, 2010, and it was subsequently ratified by 12 other states. Mississippi ratified the 19th Amendment on March 22, 1984, after rejecting it in March of 1920.

According to The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World available in Ball State University Libraries’ Atlas Collection and GIS Research and Map Collection (GRMC), “Native American women and men who lived on reservations were not granted citizenship, and thus the right to vote, until 1924, four years after other U.S. women.” Also women in Puerto Rico “did not win suffrage until 1929, when it was granted only to ‘literate women.’ They won universal suffrage in 1935.”

The map shown above (click to enlarge) depicts where women were allowed to vote in the United States prior to the 19th Amendment in 1919. The map is from the United States History Atlas available in the GRMC.

The chart shown is from The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World and displays the gap between men’s and women’s suffrage in selected countries around the world.

Maps from the GRMC circulate for two weeks or longer. Atlases circulate for 28 days or longer.

For more information about maps, atlases, or other cartographic resources available from University Libraries, please contact the GRMC Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 765-285-1097.