User:Ryan (Wiki Ed)/Nineteenth Amendment planning

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Page purpose[edit]

This page is for participants in the Wiki Education "Writing for Women's Suffrage" Advanced Wikipedia course. Between May 6-31, we will be collaboratively working to apply Good Article criteria to the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution article.

This page is for planning, coordination, and notes.

Feel free to create new sections, subsections, lists, etc. here. If a discussion, idea, proposal, or question would be useful for all participants to see, consider whether it would be better to post it here than on Slack (where it can more easily scroll off-screen). Please be bold in editing this page!

See also this page where we can collect relevant sources: User:Ryan (Wiki Ed)/Nineteenth Amendment sources.


Hi there. Looking forward to meeting everyone today. Here are two approaches to overviews/outlines I've found that might be helpful as a starting point. One from the History Channel (don't judge) and one from a forthcoming book by Sandra Opdycke, When Women Won the Vote

Opdycke TOC: The long road from Seneca Falls : 1848-1910 -- New life for the state suffrage campaigns : 1910-1913 -- The federal campaign takes center-stage : 1913-1917 -- Working for suffrage in wartime : 1917-1918 -- The culmination : 1918-1920 -- Living with woman suffrage.

History.com link: https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/19th-amendment-1

Draft outline[edit]

Existing structure[edit]

  1. Text
  2. Background
  3. Proposal and ratification
  4. Leser v. Garnett
  5. Effects
  6. Legacy
  7. See also
  8. Notes
  9. References
  10. External links

Working outline[edit]

  1. Text
  2. Background
    • Note: This section primarily organized chronologically. Each sub-section includes previous proposals prior to the 19th Amendment, opposition and anti-suffrage efforts, status of women's suffrage in different regions - 72roadrunner
    • Early Woman Suffrage Efforts (including attention to race/class/region/sex) - Betsy/Profbe (esp basic edits to current text re Seneca Falls)
    • Reconstruction Amendments and Woman Suffrage (including attention to race issues) - Betsy/Profbe
    • Post-Reconstruction (including moving some of the text from the current "proposal and timeline" portion here, and adding more detailed attention to organizations, anti-suffrage, and redirects to other pages) - Rosalina523
  3. Proposal and ratification
    • Proposal - BonnieEllenBurns
    • Ratification process (including pro- and anti-suffrage organizing/reporting, or redirects to this info elsewhere) - BonnieEllenBurns, Rosalina523
      • Note to folks working on BACKGROUND from Bonnie: Maybe we coordinate to figure out what moves from this section to the background section and what is more properly tackled here.
      • Ratification timeline - Penny/De Pisan
  4. Legal Challenges - Betsy/Profbe
  5. Legacy / Effects
    • Women's voting behavior - Khughes23; I'm also interested in helping with this in some fashion - CuriousDaily
    • Limitations on many women of color (or some such title - something that allows us to speak to the lack of voting rights for indigenous women, Asian immigrants, African Americans in the Jim Crow south, etc and when the got the vote) - Khughes23, Rosalina523
      • Currently working on a draft for this section, will have it in my sandbox by our class tonight --Khughes23 (talk) 13:22, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
    • ERA - 72roadrunner
    • Effects on juries
    • Pop Culture - Penny/De Pisan
    • Women's Equality Day
      • DONE - brief mention and link to the entry that celebrates anniversary of 19th amendment (since 1973) - CuriousDaily
  6. See also - Betsy/profbe
  7. Notes
  8. References
  9. External links

Constitutional Amendments that are GAs[edit]

You may find it useful to refer to these articles (and their reviews) to figure out what content should be represented on this article.

Important note Many of these Good Article Reviews are quite old (6 years ago or more) so they may not be reflective of what a GA review currently looks like.

Coordinating: what are you interested in contributing? What are you not interested or unable to contribute?[edit]

Hi @Profbe, BonnieEllenBurns, 72roadrunner, De Pisan, CuriousDaily, Khughes23, and Rosalina523: hopefully by now you've had time to look over the article and put some thought into what sections interest you (and perhaps what sections don't interest you). Maybe you've even noticed a missing section that you'd like to write. It would be helpful for the planning process if everyone responds to this thread with some ideas by Monday. Also feel free to include what resources you have access to if you're willing to look up sources at another person's request (example: Newspapers.com, NewspaperArchive.com, JSTOR, institutional access to a University library/resources, etc).

A talk page tip: don't forget to sign your posts with 4 tildes (~~~~). For other talk page resources, you may find this page helpful. If you haven't already, it would be a good idea to watchlist this page and the Nineteenth Amendment article. Thanks, Elysia (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:37, 10 May 2019 (UTC)


Betsy - I'd like to work on the Background/Pre-Reconstruction section, as I've found a few errors or omissions here (not indicating that NV, MA and NH had state suffrage early on, indicating suffrage wasn't a focus at Seneca Falls, connection of suffrage activism to other movements, redirects to other suffrage pages). I could also do the Reconstruction section, as this is somewhat limited in attention to the ways in which this influenced woman suffrage activism. I could also do something with info on Fairchild V Hughes (1922) or the post-19th amendment ways in which some women still didn't have the vote. I'm open to other options as well, especially if the content/outline changes ~~~~Betsy

The text the Background section, as it appears now, is mostly chronological. Where were you thinking about breaking up the text into the Early, Reconstruction, and post-Reconstruction periods for starters? If Reconstruction is defined as 1865-77, then there's just a single paragraph on that era in the current text with some of the following paragraphs in the Background section having content related to the two earlier eras. We may need to move some of the background content around to fit the subheadings, which are in a more specific chronological order.Rosalina523 (talk) 18:06, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

I'd be willing to tackle the post-reconstruction era section of background, but it may also cover content included in the proposals for ratification, depending on the end date of the post-recon section. What end date did you have in mind? We may need to expand that section to include more subheadings.Rosalina523 (talk) 18:06, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

I'd also suggest a separate section for the early proposals, those which weren't successful. We might also want to split the proposals and ratification content into separate headings, since they were separate activities - Congressional proposals and state ratification efforts. We may also want to add a final section on how Congress finalized the process after Tennessee ratified the amendment. The Congressional Record and news accounts will provide details on formal ceremonies/Congressional activities to add the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.Rosalina523 (talk) 18:06, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

I'm interested in contributing content on anti-suffrage groups, which may need its own section heading (Resistance?), or could be folded in to the Background section. I've gathered some material online, as well as a book called The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine Weiss; looking at other texts as well. I have access to a number of databases through my college library: JStor, EBSCO One Search, Gale Reference, Academic Search. I'd be happy to search for materials for anyone needing access to these resources. I also have a full Ancestry.com subscription, if that helps. Finally, I can contribute editing skills to our project. ~~~~Christy

I'm interested in looking into the states that ratified after the passage of the amendment, particularly those in the south that didn't ratify until decades later. @CuriousDaily: and I have access/subscriptions to JSTOR, Newspapers.com, and Ancestry. --Khughes23 (talk) 13:57, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Yikes, the Legacy section needs major overhaul - the content only relates to its use in pop culture and amendment-related monuments. It seems like real missing legacy is voter turnout among women, from passage of the amendment to the present, women's influence in elections, women in elected office, etc. Other suggestions? Also, I'd suggest moving the pop culture content and the amendment-related monuments in separate sections, there's bound to be more to add in 2020. I can track down book-related references, and journals, also have access to newspaper archives.Rosalina523 (talk) 18:06, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

I was thinking of adding something about "Women in White" and the history (or lack thereof) of suffragists wearing white and the contemporary adoption of wearing white (Hillary Clinton, women in Congress, etc.) as protest fashion in honor of women's suffrage. I was thinking of it as a legacy of 19th amendment. But does the group think this subject belongs in "Women's Suffrage" rather than 19th amendment. I was also considering the effect of 19th amendment on women serving on juries, but that is a complicated subject and already has its own article, Women in United States juries . So I'm leaning towards US women wearing white (during the early 20th century and now). Any opinions about whether Women in White belongs in 19th amendment or elsewhere?--CuriousDaily (talk) 19:53, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Evaluation comments[edit]

  • The article is titled "Nineteenth Amendment", so in text it should be called this as well for consistency (not 19th or 19th) (Bonnie fixed these in narrative (mostly), but not in citations, quote, or image captions)
  • Related somewhat to this, date formats on Wikipedia don't use superscripts. So it should always be "20th century" and never "20th century". (MOS:CENTURY)
  • Bolding is rarely used in an article--only use bolding if a term redirects to this article (typing it in the search bar brings you there). (MOS:NOBOLD) Ryan fixed this--thanks, Ryan!
  • complete sentences aren't generally enclosed in parentheses While women had the right to vote in several of the early colonies in what would become the United States, after 1776, with the exception of New Jersey, all states adopted constitutions that denied voting rights to women. (Beginning in 1776, New Jersey's constitution initially granted suffrage to property-holding residents, including single and married women, but the state rescinded women's voting rights in 1807 and did not restore them until New Jersey ratified the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.)
  • I fixed a formatting error for a reference's date (the citations are particular about how they want dates formatted, but there was only one formatted incorrectly)
  • Can we add a reference to the text section?
  • This is redundant In 1865, at the conclusion of the war, a "Petition for Universal Suffrage", signed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, among others, called for a national constitutional amendment to "prohibit the several states from disenfranchising any of their citizens on the ground of sex" in 1865
  • this sentence contains a comma splice. Should be semicolon or 2 sentences: In Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162 (1874), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not provide voting rights to U.S. citizens], [it only guaranteed additional protection of privileges to citizens who already had them.
  • ...a Tennessee native, represented the NWA this is the first time this initialism is used. Initialisms should always be defined at first use.
  • Especially in the south should be the South, as it is a proper noun in this context
  • Upon signing the ratification certificate, the Governor of Tennessee sent it registered mail to the U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby whose office received it at 4:00 a.m. on August 26, 1920. I think the word "by" is missing here
  • Found a sentence with a "dead ref". What the code looks like is just this: Between January 1918 and June 1919, the House and Senate voted on the federal amendment five times.<sup>[39]</sup>. So essentially someone just added a superscript and typed [39] instead of actually inserting a ref. This will need to be fixed. The difficulty is that the ref that was #39 when they added this part is very likely no longer ref #39 (the reference list is dynamic and automatically restructures itself to reflect the refs in the order they appear in the text). Gotta track down the ref (or any ref) that supports this sentence
    • @BonnieEllenBurns: it looks like you may have added this sentence. Do you recall which ref should go here?
    • ~~~~BonnieEllenBurns. Dang. Not off the top of my head. I'll see if I can find it again.
    • Okay, I can't find that citation....grrr... but I've found this page and will try to figure this out http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=3&psid=3610
    • BB again. That link I thought would work is actually a ratification timetable. Still looking for this. Might have to rework that transition.
  • Despite the suffragists efforts... should be plural possessive suffragists' here
  • Rosalina523 has added some citation needed tags to indicate sentences that need more support
  • Does anyone else find the "See also the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson at the top of the Proposal and Ratification section weird? Yes, he was president, but his page actually has very little on his attitudes, evolution, and eventual support of women's suffrage. Does this belong somewhere else? I went ahead and moved this.
  • RE: WikiProject's comment that we have a lot of over wiki-linking. I read the guidelines and the only thing I can think that might be overdone are links to states (which are sometimes repeated in the ratification timetable) and maybe a couple of duplicate links of things like Susan. B. Anthony. Should we remove those state links or ask this evaluator for more guidance?
  • When/what to wikilink can be a little tricky, and interpretations of the guidelines can vary a bit. The states should be ok, since it's typically allowed to duplicate wikilinks within a set-apart list like the ratification list. In these edits I think that I addressed the rest of the overlinking. -Ryan
  • Awesome Ryan, thanks! BB.
  • relative to the length of the article, the lead seems a bit short. Does it adequately summarize the full text of the article? Refer to MOS:LEAD for more information on elements of the lead
  • Lead is now longer but may need a few tweaks
  • While white women sought the vote to gain equality with their husbands and brothers, black women sought the vote as a means of survival as well this comes across as a bit unclear to me. Can someone strengthen the causality relationship of "right to vote" and "survival"?
  • In staggering/laddering the images, we have unfortunately introduced "sandwiching". It is not desirable to have images on either side of text per MOS:SANDWICH. Let's see if we can remove some images and then there will more room to breathe. Images I feel can be removed and we don't actually lose much--
    • "How it feels to be forcibly fed"
    • "Headquarters of the National American Woman Suffrage Association."
    • possibly "Official program of the Woman Suffrage Procession, March 3, 1913, Washington, D.C."

Basically, the article is top-heavy with images, and I feel that some need to be trimmed to 1) reduce sandwiching and 2) provide a more even distribution of images throughout both halves of the article.

"Bigger ticket" items for next week (if we can pull it off)[edit]

  • Rework 19th Amendment Literature section to be a "propaganda" (or other name) section, if that seems like a good idea.
  • Should we add a section on Suffrage in the Southern, Eastern, and Midwestern states in the Background section or is that too much? I get why we focused on Western states. Seems like we could raise some good issues if we added some stuff about the Southern states in particular.
  • League of Women Voters. Someone added that as an image. Might be worth a brief mention in legacy (we could mostly link to the Wiki article) since it was created out of NAWSA and continues today.
  • Info on ERA under Legacy? Bonnie added both of these to Legacy.
  • Image review. Looks like some of these are still not quite in the right place.

Add new section headings as you find helpful[edit]

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