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She Votes, U.S. #2020election - an SGI Original Series

She Grows It™ (SGI) will commemorate the Centennial Anniversary of Women's Suffrage by publishing a 7-day series that celebrates some of the major activists. These women are among those who advocated against the patriarchal social system, making it possible for American women to vote today. They were the ones who risked; yet, some of them are little known or overlooked [5]. Therefore, it’s an honor for SGI to pay tribute to these courageous and determined women. 

Courtesy of the New York Public Library

Courtesy of the New York Public Library

Thanks to their fight, this year marks 100 years since the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, granting women the right to vote. Yet, the right was not simply “given” to women, and didn’t happen overnight. Rather it was a result of a seventy-two-year battle, and an even longer one for African American, Native American and Asian American women [3]. This challenging path was accompanied by women’s arrests, torture, and attacks [8]. But despite the many challenges faced in giving women a voice within a patriarchal society, leaders of the campaign such as Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell and Frances E.W. Harper tirelessly fought for American women's rights [6]. 

Women suffrage raged alongside the fight for racial equality in the US following the Civil War. This meant that suffrage groups were not immune to the myriad of racial issues plaguing the country. The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) mainly focused on rights for white women and African American men, while Black women fell out of this equation. Eventually The American Equal Rights Association (AERA) dissolved over fights about whether to support the 15th Amendment, with which Black men won the right to vote [3]. At the core of the fight was white women suffrage leaders' political expediency at the expense of promising white supremacist that by giving women the right to vote, it could add to the white vote, which could then outweigh the Black vote.

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Class, race, and gender have always divided the suffrage movement. Thus, the National Association of Colored Women (NCNW) was formed along with individual Black women’s clubs to challenge discrimination through enfranchisement [8]. Some of which were led by outstanding women like Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell [4, 10]. What were also really prominent are Black women taking part in the women's suffrage parade of 1913, despite being actively discouraged from participating by other suffrage groups. And they did so even at the cost of marching in the back, except a few, like Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who proudly marched with her state banner [1, 2]. 

As a result of both Black and white women’s efforts alike, on the 18th of August 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the Amendment. This, in turn, promised US citizens that their votes [shall not be denied or abridged] [on account of sex]. Nonetheless, both Black women and Black men still faced major obstacles in voting, which included literacy tests, grandfather clauses, poll taxes and even violence.

Today we still see disenfranchisement in voter ID laws, closure of polling locations in predominantly African-American communities, and intimidation for rebuking systemic racism [12]. Therefore the battle is still being fought to exercise the right to vote [3, 7]. So to commemorate the 100th year anniversary of the 19th Amendment, over the next seven days we will feature posts of Women's Suffrage activists leading up to the November 2020 US election day. We will use this series to highlight the women like Nannie Helen Burroughs, Mary Church Terrell, Ida B Wells-Barnett, and many other powerful figures who played particularly pivotal roles in ensuring that all women, regardless of their ethnicity or race, have the right to vote. 

Authors: Dr. Ashley Milton, Alyssa Kalac, Marina Tsoumpa

References

  1. Bailey, Dr. M. (2019). Essay #4: Between Two Worlds: Black Women and the Fight for Voting Rights (U.S. National Park Service). Retrieved from Nps.gov website: https://www.nps.gov/articles/black-women-and-the-fight-for-voting-rights.htm

  2. Bernard, M. (2013, March 4). Despite the tremendous risk, African American women marched for suffrage, too. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2013/03/03/despite-the-tremendous-risk-african-american-women-marched-for-suffrage-too/

  3. Block, M. (2020, August 26). Yes, Women Could Vote After The 19th Amendment — But Not All Women. Or Men. Retrieved from NPR.org website: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/26/904730251/yes-women-could-vote-after-the-19th-amendment-but-not-all-women-or-men

  4. Guy-Sheftall, B. (2009). Black Feminist Studies: The Case of Anna Julia Cooper. African American Review, 43(1), 11–15. https://doi.org/10.1353/afa.0.0019

  5. Harley, S. (2013). African American Women and the Nineteenth Amendment (U.S. National Park Service). Retrieved October 22, 2020, from Nps.gov website: https://www.nps.gov/articles/african-american-women-and-the-nineteenth-amendment.htm

  6. History. (2009, October 14). Women Who Fought for the Vote - HISTORY. Retrieved October 22, 2020, from www.history.com website: https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/women-who-fought-for-the-vote-1#:~:text=Some%20suffragists%2C%20such%20as%20Susan

  7. Jones, M. S. (2020, August 7). For Black women, the 19th Amendment didn’t end their fight to vote. Retrieved October 22, 2020, from History & Culture website: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/08/black-women-continued-fighting-for-vote-after-19th-amendment/

  8. Lange, A. (2016, August 23). History of U.S. Woman’s Suffrage. Retrieved from History of U.S. Woman’s Suffrage website: http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/nacw

  9. McArdle, T. (2017, November 10). ‘Night of terror’: The suffragists who were beaten and tortured for seeking the vote. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/11/10/night-of-terror-the-suffragists-who-were-beaten-and-tortured-for-seeking-the-vote/

  10. Michals, D. (2017). Mary Church Terrell. Retrieved from National Women’s History Museum website: https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-church-terrell

  11. Sparacino, E. K. (2004). An Online Bibliography of Resources for the Study of Woman Suffrage. The History Teacher, 37(2), 229. https://doi.org/10.2307/1555654

  12. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/20/us/poll-worker-fired-black-lives-matter-trnd/index.html 

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