In the United States during the 1950s and 1960s, people organized to demand that the federal government protect the rights of African Americans and other minorities. People worked together to change unfair laws. They gave speeches, marched in the streets, and participated in boycotts.

The law stated that a person could vote if his grandfather had been allowed to vote. It made it possible for white people who could not pass a literacy test to vote because their grandfathers had the right to vote. It also made it impossible for African Americans to vote because their grandfathers had not been allowed to vote.

Tests given to people to prove they are able to read and write. These tests were used in the South to keep African Americans from voting.

Added to the Constitution in 1920, it gave women the right to vote.

A tax that voters in many states had to pay before they could vote.

It states that the right to vote in a national election shall not be denied because a person fails to pay a poll tax or any other tax.

It gave citizens eighteen years of age or older the right to vote in all elections.

Lucretia Mott was a U.S. Quaker, abolitionist, women's rights activist, and social reformer. She had formed the idea of reforming the position of women in society when she was amongst the women excluded from the World Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. In 1848 she was invited by Jane Hunt to a meeting that led to the first meeting about women's rights. Mott helped write the Declaration of Sentiments during the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention. Her speaking abilities made her an important abolitionist, feminist, and reformer. When slavery was outlawed in 1865, she advocated giving former slaves who had been bound to slavery laws within the boundaries of the United States, whether male or female, the right to vote. She remained a central figure in the abolition and suffrage movement until her death in 1880.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) in 1869. Stanton became the NWSA's first president?a position she held until 1890. At that time the organization merged with another suffrage group to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Stanton served as the president of the new organization for two years.

Social reformer involved in both the abolitionist and woman suffrage movements. President of National American Woman Suffrage Association. Wrote and lectured in both the United States and Europe for women's right to vote.