Politics | Page 26

Documenting ratifying the 19th Amendment in Minnesota

Minnesota's Ratification of the 19th Amendment, September 8, 1919. Committee Papers, 1919–1920; Records of the US House of Representatives, Record Group 233; National Archives Building, Washington, DC. Public domain.

J. A. A. Burnquist

Official portrait of Minnesota Governor J. A. A. Burnquist, 1919. Painted by Carl A. Bohnen.

Woman-suffrage banner

Woman-suffrage banner, ca. 1918.

Maria Sanford, 1918

Maria Sanford, 1918. Photo by Lee Brothers

March for woman suffrage

March for woman suffrage, Madison, Minnesota, ca. 1916.

Woman-suffrage meeting at Rice Park

Woman-suffrage meeting at Rice Park, St. Paul, 1914.

League of Women Voters

League of Women Voters swearing in new members or registering women to vote, ca. 1923.

Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in Minnesota

Minnesota’s suffragists worked tirelessly to win the vote beginning in the late 1850s, when Mary Colburn delivered what is believed to be the state’s first women’s rights speech. After a long struggle, the dream of equal suffrage took a big leap forward on September 8, 1919, when the state legislature voted to ratify the woman suffrage amendment, making Minnesota the fifteenth state to do so.