Anne M. Boylan is an emeritus professor of history and women and gender studies at the University of Delaware, where she taught and did research on women's history, social history, and historical memory. The author of Votes for Delaware Women (2021), Women's Rights in the United States: A History in Documents (2015), The Origins of Women's Activism: New York and Boston, 1797-1840 (2002), and Sunday School: The Formation of an American Institution (1988), she is currently working on two projects: biographical profiles of Delaware's women suffrage leaders; and an article on popular presentations of women's history in the 1930s and 1940s. She has worked extensively with teachers of grades 3-12 through federal Teaching American History grants.
This lecture offers a challenge to the common narrative that women "were granted" or, more accurately, won the right to vote in 1920. It looks at the significance of the 19th Amendment by examining some women's access to and use of voting rights before 1920, the Amendment's ratification, and women's continuing exclusions from voting and full citizenship after 1920.