Florida\u27s First Women Candidates

The nineteenth amendment, the women’s suffrage amendment, having been ratified by the requisite thirty-eight states, was declared a part of the United States Constitution on August 26, 1920. Tennessee cast the deciding vote. The amendment had been first proposed by Congress on June 5, 1915. Florida was not among the thirty-eight states. Ratification did not come in this state until 1969, and then only as a symbolic recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of the Florida League of Women Voters. Florida’s women unsuccessfully had urged their legislators since the 1890s to adopt woman’s suffrage. In 1917 the right to vote in city elections had been granted women at Florence Villa, Moore Haven, Palm Beach, and Pass-a-Grille, and in 1918 at DeLand, Aurantia, Daytona Beach, and Orange City