Youth Engagement, Voting, and Election

Although the draft age was lowered to 18 during World War II, attempts to lower the voting age failed until the 1960s, when young people led the movement themselves and gained momentum. In 1970, Congress amended an extension of the Voting Rights Act to lower the voting age, but it applied only to federal elections; most states still required voters to be 21 years old. To avoid conflicting rules for state and federal elections, Congress passed the Twenty-Sixth Amendment in March 1971. It was ratified in one hundred days, the fastest approval of any constitutional amendment.

The 1972 presidential election between Richard Nixon and George McGovern was the first held after the Twenty-Sixth Amendment lowered the voting age to 18. Political parties and independent groups organized campaigns designed to encourage registration and capture the votes of the newly enfranchised “youths.” The Student Vote Project encouraged newly eligible voters to participate with an enthusiastic voter registration campaign that included public service spots on popular radio stations and an array of clothing and other products designed to inspire first-time voters to proudly come out to the polls.

This hand-painted banner celebrates the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson, proclaiming: “T. Jefferson President of the United States of America/John Adams is no more.” The election of 1800 was the first in which the presidency changed parties. Federalist John Adams was defeated by Democratic Republican Thomas Jefferson in a heated and bitter campaign. The banner illustrates the gloating jubilation of the winners but also documents the success of the American electoral system in this peaceful transition of power.

Women of all ages were actively involved in the woman suffrage movement and willing to risk their liberty and safety to fight for their rights. In 1917, to pressure President Woodrow Wilson to support a constitutional amendment giving women the vote, suffragists from the National Woman’s Party became the first people to picket the White House. At first, the public tolerated, even admired, the pickets for their dignity and tenacity. But when America entered World War I, the picketing seemed unpatriotic and embarrassing to the government. The suffragists were taunted, assaulted, and eventually arrested and jailed for obstructing traffic (the picketing wasn’t illegal). Reports detailing abuse and force-feeding as well as the courage of the imprisoned women generated public sympathy and the pickets were released. The freed prisoners were honored with silver pins in the shape of prison doors. This pin belonged to Alice Paul (aged 32) the leader of the pickets.

Fifty-seven years after winning the vote, over two thousand delegates gathered in Houston, Texas, in November 1977. This federally funded conference was the most purposely diverse and demographically representative group that had ever been assembled in the United States. Each state sent delegates to debate proposals promoting equal rights and ending discrimination toward women that they would send to the president and Congress for action. African American poet Maya Angelou linked women’s rights activism past and present in “To Form a More Perfect Union,” the proclamation for the conference. It acknowledged history’s “positive achievement to inspire us and the negative omissions to teach us.” The declaration committed participants to honor the famous and unsung, recognize the challenges that others face, and seek justice for all women. Approximately two thousand runners relayed Angelou’s proclamation and a lit torch 2,610 miles from the site of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention in New York to Houston. They symbolically passed the torch from the suffragists to a new generation of women’s rights activists. Maya Angelou read her proclamation, signed by the runners who carried it, at the conference’s opening ceremony in Houston.

Wristbands were substituted for the popular “I Voted” stickers in Chicago in 2016.  Although reviews were mixed, the donor of this wristband, a Chicago-area high school teacher, wore hers to school after voting in the morning and said her students “really liked seeing the wristbands” which prompted them to start actively discussing the process of elections.

This podium clock was used in the 1976 debates between President Gerald Ford, the Republican nominee, and Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter, former governor of Georgia. It was mounted on one of their podiums to help enforce the rules: three-minute answers, followed by two-minute rebuttals. But the first debate of the three held that year was also memorable for words that weren’t said. The sound went out and, for 27 minutes, Ford and Carter stood silently—and awkwardly—in place while the country watched and waited. Although they both later said they wished they had been less ill at ease, Ford and Carter each acknowledged the respect they had for their opponent, a respect that grew into friendship later in their lives.

Televised presidential debates first became part of the campaign landscape when John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon sat across from each other in 1960. It took a few years for them to become the norm but now debates are one of the most anticipated events of every campaign. These chairs were used in the first debate, held in the CBS studios in 1960. Plaques on the back identify who sat in each chair for what is described as “the first face-to-face discussion between presidential candidates.”

Many factors, including changes in technology and the emotionally charged issues of the day, led to an explosion of campaign items in the 1896 presidential election, none more unusual than the soap baby. The campaigns of both the Republican candidate and eventual winner William McKinley and his Democratic opponent William Jennings Bryan were represented by individual infant-shaped soaps with tags promoting their economic policies. Future politicians abandoned these items apparently because voters thought they looked too much like babies in coffins.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first president with a significant physical disability.  After more than a decade in politics, he contracted polio and lost the use of his legs.  Although some believed his career was over, FDR adapted his approach to campaigning and became even more successful. In his winning races for New York governor and U.S. president, FDR loved to campaign in a convertible so he could see and be seen by voters without having to reveal his physical challenges. He used this wool lap robe, embroidered with the presidential seal, to keep warm while greeting crowds and even giving speeches from his car.

On February 1, 1960, four young Black men, college students at North Carolina A&T, sat at the “whites only” section of a Woolworths’ lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. People commonly stopped at lunch counters in department stores and train and bus stations to have coffee, a snack, or a quick meal. Where racial segregation prevailed, Black people could order food but could not eat at the counter. When the staff refused to serve them, the students sat at the counter for the rest of the day. The following day they returned with more students. Over the days and weeks, young people at colleges throughout Greensboro joined the sit-ins. Additional protesters picketed the store and encouraged others to boycott Woolworths until anyone could receive the same service regardless of their race. The protests in Greensboro were not the first sit-ins, but because of their size they gained widespread publicity. Thousands of others from West Virginia to Texas held sit-ins in their own communities. In many places, the non-violent activists endured harassment, such as having people dump food on them, spit or curse at them, and even violent attacks. The police often arrested protesters because they were breaking the laws maintaining segregation. By July 1960, Woolworths agreed to end racial segregation at its stores, but in other places the sit-ins continued for over a year. The Greensboro sit-ins marked the beginning of an era of direct, confrontational, non-violent protest, and spurred the creation of a new civil rights organization, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

In 1960, the Supreme Court issued the decision in Boynton v. Virginia that racially segregated facilities for interstate travel, such as bus stations, were illegal. However, in many Southern communities, restrooms, waiting rooms, restaurants, and similar facilities remained racially segregated. To attract national attention and force the federal government to act, interracial protesters revived a non-violent tactic from over a decade earlier—Freedom Rides. These activists rode buses through the South, deliberately breaking laws and signs that designated some facilities “white only” and others for African Americans. Beginning in the spring of 1961, waves of Freedom Riders braved bombs, beatings, and brutal assaults from mobs of white supremacists.

Law enforcement often did little to protect the Freedom Riders and instead arrested them. In prison, the activists kept up their spirits by singing, telling stories, and playing games. People incarcerated in Mississippi’s notorious Parchman Prison created this tiny deck of cards from an envelope. Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, who donated this object to the National Museum of American History, was one of over four hundred Freedom Riders. Despite the opposition of her white family, she joined Black civil rights activists who organized sit-ins and walk-outs. She was 23 years old when she was arrested during the Freedom Rides. The Freedom Riders called national and international attention to the realities of racial segregation in the South. In November 1961, the Interstate Commerce Commission finally issued a ruling requiring the desegregation of interstate travel facilities.