Items20The creator’s order
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Frederick DouglassStart 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.0i - 2
Susan B. AnthonyBorn 15 Feb 1820Anthony 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.0i - 3
Carrie Chapman CattBorn 9 Jan 1859Catt 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.0i - 4
Alice PaulBorn 11 Jan 1885Paul 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.0i - 5
Zitkala-ŠaBorn 22 Feb 1876Zitkala-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.0i - 6
Thurgood MarshallBorn 2 Jul 1908Before 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.0i - 7
Spessard HollandBorn 10 Jul 1892A 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 1964.0i - 8
Earl WarrenBorn 19 Mar 1891Warren'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.0i - 9
Fannie Lou HamerBorn 6 Oct 1917Hamer 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.0i - 10
Martin Luther King Jr.Born 15 Jan 1929King'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.0i
