Women had been fighting for the right to vote since our country’s beginning. In the early 1900s, President Woodrow Wilson had been understanding towards women’s fight for the right to vote. He often put in a good word ford them and greeted peaceful demonstrators at the White House. This might have been because he had been a teacher at a women’s college and was the father of two daughters who considered themselves “suffragettes.” During his presidential campaign against Theodore Roosevelt, both he and the other presidential candidate had agreed on many changes like child-labor laws and pro-union legislation, but both of them were against letting women vote. Roosevelt, however, had been in favor of giving women the right to vote.
On August 28, 1917, woman suffragists picketed in front of the White House, demanding President Wilson to support an amendment to the Constitution to let women vote. He greeted them on his way out as usual, but their protests against the war too made many even angrier. A lot of the women were arrested and thrown in jail where many of the women went on a hunger strike and were force-fed by their prison wardens. President Wilson was very upset by the hunger strikes and worried about negative publicity for his administration, so he finally agreed to a suffrage amendment in January 1918. Then two years later, in 1920, just before his second term ended, Wilson and Congress passed the 19th Amendment, which officially gave women the right to vote.
