Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in the context of "U.S. House of Representatives"

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 1920. The Republican ticket of senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio and governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts defeated the Democratic ticket of governor James M. Cox of Ohio and assistant secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York. It was the first election held after the end of the First World War, and the first election after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment gave nationwide suffrage to women.

Incumbent president Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat who had served since 1913, privately hoped for a third term despite severe physical and mental disabilities from a stroke, but he had very little support. Former president Theodore Roosevelt had been the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, but he died in 1919 without leaving an obvious heir to his progressive legacy. The major parties turned to little-known dark horse candidates from the state of Ohio, a populous swing state with many electoral votes. Cox won on the 44th ballot at the 1920 Democratic National Convention, defeating William Gibbs McAdoo (Wilson's son-in-law), A. Mitchell Palmer, and several other candidates. Harding emerged as a compromise candidate between the conservative and progressive wings of the Republican party, and he clinched his nomination on the tenth ballot at the 1920 Republican National Convention.

The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Article One of the U.S. Constitution in enumerated matters to pass or defeat federal government legislation, known as bills. Those that are also passed by the Senate are sent to the president for signature or veto. The House's exclusive powers include initiating all revenue bills, impeaching federal officers, and electing the president if no candidate receives a majority of votes in the Electoral College.

Members of the House serve a fixed term of two years, with each seat up for election before the start of the next Congress. Special elections may also occur in the case of a vacancy. The House's composition was established by Article One of the United States Constitution. The House is composed of representatives who, pursuant to the Uniform Congressional District Act, sit in single member congressional districts allocated to each state on the basis of population as measured by the United States census, provided that each state gets at least one representative. Since its inception in 1789, all representatives have been directly elected. Although suffrage was initially limited, it gradually widened, particularly after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment and the civil rights movement.

The United States Constitution has served as the supreme law of the United States since taking effect in 1789. The document was written at the 1787 Philadelphia Convention and was ratified through a series of state conventions held in 1787 and 1788. Since 1789, the Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times; particularly important amendments include the ten amendments of the United States Bill of Rights, the three Reconstruction Amendments, and the Nineteenth Amendment.

The Constitution grew out of efforts to reform the Articles of Confederation, an earlier constitution which provided for a loose alliance of states with a weak central government. From May 1787 through September 1787, delegates from twelve of the thirteen states convened in Philadelphia, where they wrote a new constitution. Two alternative plans were developed at the convention. The nationalist majority, soon to be called "Federalists", put forth the Virginia Plan, a consolidated government based on proportional representation among the states by population. The "old patriots", later called "Anti-Federalists", advocated the New Jersey Plan, a purely federal proposal, based on providing each state with equal representation. The Connecticut Compromise allowed for both plans to work together. Other controversies developed regarding slavery and a Bill of Rights in the original document.

The 1920 Democratic National Convention was held at the Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, California from June 28 to July 6, 1920. It resulted in the nomination of Governor James M. Cox of Ohio for president and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt from New York for vice president. The 1920 Democratic National Convention marked the first time any party had held its nominating convention in a West Coast city.

Neither President Woodrow Wilson, in spite of his failing health, nor former United States Secretary of State and three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan had entirely given up hope that their party would turn to them, but neither was, in the event, formally nominated. In addition to the eventual nominee, Cox, the other high-scoring candidates as the voting proceeded were: Secretary of the Treasury William McAdoo and Attorney General Mitchell Palmer. On the forty-fourth ballot, Governor James M. Cox of Ohio was nominated for the Presidency. Cora Wilson Stewart of Kentucky, head of the National Education Association's new illiteracy commission, was chosen to second the nomination for Governor Cox. Mrs. Stewart was selected to replace Kentucky Representative J. Campbell Cantrill, highlighting the candidate's support for what would become the 19th Amendment.

Women's suffrage, or the right of women to vote, was established in the United States over the course of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, first in various states and localities, then nationally in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The demand for women's suffrage began to gather strength in the 1840s, emerging from the broader movement for women's rights. In 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention, passed a resolution in favor of women's suffrage despite opposition from some of its organizers, who believed the idea was too extreme. By the time of the first National Women's Rights Convention in 1850, however, suffrage was becoming an increasingly important aspect of the movement's activities.

Alice Stokes Paul (January 11, 1885 – July 9, 1977) was an American Quaker, suffragette, suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist, and one of the foremost leaders and strategists of the campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits sex discrimination in the right to vote. Paul initiated, and along with Lucy Burns and others, strategized events such as the Woman Suffrage Procession and the Silent Sentinels, which were part of the successful campaign that resulted in the amendment's passage in August 1920.

Paul often suffered police brutality and other physical abuse for her activism, always responding with nonviolence and courage. She was jailed under terrible conditions in 1917 for participating in a Silent Sentinels protest in front of the White House, as she had been several times during earlier efforts to secure the vote for women in the United Kingdom.

The 1920s (pronounced "nineteen-twenties" often shortened to the "'20s" or the "Twenties") was a decade that began on January 1, 1920, and ended on December 31, 1929. Primarily known for the economic boom that occurred in the Western World following the end of World War I (1914–1918), the decade is frequently referred to as the "Roaring Twenties" or the "Jazz Age" in America and Western Europe, and the "Golden Twenties" in Germany, while French speakers refer to the period as the "Années folles" ('crazy years') to emphasize the decade's social, artistic, and cultural dynamism.

The devastating Wall Street crash in October 1929 is generally viewed as a harbinger of the end of 1920s prosperity in North America and Europe. In the Soviet Union, the New Economic Policy was created by the Bolsheviks in 1921, to be replaced by the first five-year plan in 1928. The 1920s saw the rise of radical political movements, with the Red Army triumphing against White movement forces in the Russian Civil War, and the emergence of far-right political movements in Europe. In 1922, the fascist leader Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy. Other dictators that emerged included Józef Piłsudski in Poland, and Peter and Alexander Karađorđević in Yugoslavia. First-wave feminism made advances, with women gaining the right to vote in the United States (1920), Albania (1920), Ireland (1921), and with suffrage being expanded in Britain to all women over 21 years old (1928).