"The Largest Act of Enfranchisement in Our History"

"Nine Southern states joined by Delaware forced ratification to a halt, one state short. Only Tennessee was left, and the opposition had good reason to think it would line up with the rest of the region. But after a nine-day special session in the heat of August 1920, a legislator pledged to the nays jumped ship—he later said it was because his mother told him to—and the 36th state was in.
"Even then, in several Southern states, die-hards went to court to invalidate the amendment, stopping only after the Supreme Court in 1922 unanimously dismissed their arguments."

In The New York Times, Christine Stansell looks back ninety years to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.