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Frederick Douglass
Start here for the argument that the vote is the foundation of freedom. Douglass campaigned for Black male suffrage after the Civil War and backed the 15th Amendment of 1870, while also attending the 1848 Seneca Falls convention in support of votes for women.
More about Frederick Douglass2
Susan B. Anthony
Born
Anthony was arrested for voting in Rochester in 1872 and turned her trial into a national argument. The women's suffrage amendment drafted with her circle was introduced in 1878 and later ratified as the 19th Amendment, often called the Anthony Amendment.
More about Susan B. Anthony3
Carrie Chapman Catt
Born
Catt shows the organising side of suffrage. Her "Winning Plan" of 1916 coordinated state campaigns with federal lobbying through the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and after ratification in 1920 she founded the League of Women Voters.
More about Carrie Chapman Catt4
Alice Paul
Born
Paul brought direct pressure to the campaign: the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington and the Silent Sentinels picketing the White House from 1917, which led to imprisonment and force-feeding. Read her alongside Catt to see how rival tactics converged on the 19th Amendment.
More about Alice Paul5
Zitkala-Ša
Born
Zitkala-Ša, a Yankton Dakota writer, co-founded the National Council of American Indians in 1926 to register and mobilise Native voters after the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. She is a reminder that citizenship did not bring the vote everywhere; some states barred Native voters into the 1950s.
More about Zitkala-Ša6
Thurgood Marshall
Born
Before the Supreme Court bench, Marshall argued Smith v. Allwright for the NAACP, and in 1944 the Court struck down the Texas white primary. It opened Democratic primaries across the South, where those primaries were effectively the real election.
More about Thurgood Marshall7
Spessard Holland
Born
A less expected name: Holland, a Florida Democrat who opposed most civil rights bills, spent years sponsoring the amendment against poll taxes in federal elections. Congress passed it in 1962 and it was ratified as the 24th Amendment in 1964.
More about Spessard Holland8
Earl Warren
Born
Warren's Court changed what an equal vote means. Reynolds v. Sims in 1964 set the principle of one person, one vote for state legislatures, and Harper v. Virginia in 1966 ended poll taxes in state elections, after Baker v. Carr had made apportionment a matter for the courts.
More about Earl Warren9
Fannie Lou Hamer
Born
Hamer was evicted from her Mississippi plantation job for trying to register in 1962, then became a field organiser. Her televised testimony for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic convention made voter exclusion impossible for the country to ignore.
More about Fannie Lou Hamer10
Martin Luther King Jr.
Born
King's 1957 "Give Us the Ballot" speech and the Selma campaign of 1965 tied the civil rights movement directly to voting. The marches to Montgomery built the public pressure that carried the Voting Rights Act through Congress that summer.
More about Martin Luther King Jr.11
John Lewis
Born
Lewis spans both sides of the story. As SNCC chairman he was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday in 1965; as a Georgia congressman for more than three decades he pressed to restore the Voting Rights Act after Shelby County v. Holder in 2013.
More about John Lewis12
Lyndon B. Johnson
Born
Johnson turned movement pressure into law. Days after Selma he told a joint session of Congress "we shall overcome" and signed the Voting Rights Act on 6 August 1965, with federal examiners and pre-clearance for states with a record of discrimination.
More about Lyndon B. Johnson13
Jennings Randolph
Born
Randolph of West Virginia first proposed lowering the voting age to 18 in 1942 and kept reintroducing it for nearly three decades. When the 26th Amendment finally passed in 1971 it was ratified in about 100 days, the fastest in the Constitution's history.
More about Jennings Randolph14
Birch Bayh
Born
Bayh chaired the Senate subcommittee on constitutional amendments and steered the 26th Amendment through in 1971. He is the only senator since the founders to author two ratified amendments, the other being the 25th on presidential succession.
More about Birch Bayh15
Willie Velasquez
Born
Velasquez founded the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project in 1974 and ran hundreds of registration drives and voting rights lawsuits across Texas and the Southwest. His motto, "Su voto es su voz", captured a project that roughly doubled Latino registration in the region.
More about Willie Velasquez16
Al Swift
Born
Swift, a Washington state congressman, was the House sponsor of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, the "motor voter" law. It made registration available when people renewed driving licences or used public assistance offices, the biggest change to registration in decades.
More about Al Swift17
Phil Keisling
Born
As Oregon's Secretary of State, Keisling championed the 1998 ballot measure that made Oregon the first state to hold all its elections by post. The model spread to several western states and shaped the national debate about postal voting long before 2020.
More about Phil Keisling18
Jim Sensenbrenner
Born
A Republican on a list that crosses party lines: Sensenbrenner, as House Judiciary chairman, led the 2006 reauthorisation of the Voting Rights Act for 25 years, which passed the Senate 98 to 0. After Shelby County in 2013 he co-sponsored a bipartisan bill to rebuild its coverage formula.
More about Jim Sensenbrenner19
Desmond Meade
Meade, himself barred from voting by a past conviction, led the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition campaign for Amendment 4, approved by 64 per cent of voters in 2018. It restored eligibility to many people who had finished their sentences, though a 2019 state law requiring payment of fines and fees limited its reach.
More about Desmond Meade20
Stacey Abrams
Born
Abrams founded the New Georgia Project in 2013 and Fair Fight Action in 2018, registering hundreds of thousands of Georgians and challenging the state's voter list practices in court. Her work is a contested recent chapter: supporters credit it with changing Georgia's electorate, while critics dispute her claims about the 2018 governor's race.
More about Stacey Abrams
