Voting Rights Come Slowly
Inconsistent access to citizenship continued in 1919 when Congress passed an act that granted citizenship to the 7,000 American Indians who served in the armed forces during WWI and received an honorable discharge.
Finally, in June of 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act into law. Though nearly two-thirds of all Indian people had acquired U.S. citizenship, the act granted full U.S. citizenship to all Indian people in the country; almost 125,000 Native people immediately became U.S. citizens. In 1927, Coolidge became the first U.S. President to visit a reservation community when he traveled to South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation.