When Congress ratified the 19th Amendment on August 18, 1920, giving American women the right to vote, it reflected the culmination of the work of generations by steadfast suffragists of all races and backgrounds. Historically, attention has focused on the efforts of white movement leaders like Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. But they have worked alongside many lesser-known suffragists, such as Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin, Dr. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, and Nina Otero-Warren, who have made crucial contributions to the cause, while fighting racism and discrimination.
For their part, “black suffragists came to the suffrage movement from a different angle,” said Earnestine Jenkins, who teaches black history and culture at the University of Memphis. Their movement, she says, grew out of the broader struggle for basic human and civil rights during Jim Crow’s oppressive era.
But while many 19th-century women’s rights activists made their political debuts in the anti-slavery movement, not all were keen to see black men overtake women for the franchise with the 15th Amendment. By examining issues competitively, some leading white suffragists have aggressively squeezed black women – and their broader civil rights issues, like segregation and racial violence – from the movement. A strategy? Use their platforms to perpetuate stereotypes that women of color were uneducated or promiscuous.
Even after the passage of the 19th Amendment, promising that the right to vote “would not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on the basis of sex,” women of color continued to be barred from voting in many states with tactics such as election taxes and literacy tests. The suffrage battles continued for decades, often against a backdrop of intimidation and violence. Yet mid-century activists like Fannie Lou Hamer fought back, knowing that the vote was a crucial tool in changing oppressive laws and dismantling ingrained racism. Here are five black suffragists whose ingenuity and perseverance were instrumental in the passage of the 19th Amendment.
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Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)
At a time in America when the majority of blacks were enslaved and women were rarely encouraged to hold political views – let alone share them in public – Frances Ellen Watkins Harper became a real celebrity as speaker. Second only to abolitionist Frederick Douglass in terms of prominent African-American writers of his day, the poet, essayist, and novelist has frequently made speaking tours to discuss slavery, civil rights and suffrage – and has donates much of the proceeds from his books to the Underground Railroad. .
Born in 1825 in Baltimore to free black parents, Harper received a rigorous education at the Watkins Academy for Negro Youth, founded by her uncle the Reverend William Watkins, an abolitionist and educator. As a teenager, she began sending her poems – which explored abolition, slavery, and her Christian faith – to local African American newspapers and published her first collection of poetry “Autumn Leaves” around 1845. Decades later, his novel, Iola Leroy, one of the first to be published by a black woman in the United States, told the story of a mixed race woman raised as white, then sold into slavery – touching on themes of race, gender and class.
Harper moved to the North in 1850 to teach, during which time she lived in a house that served as an Underground Railroad station. Hearing the stories of runaway slaves cemented his activism, as well as the passage of an 1854 law that forced free blacks who entered his home state of Northern Maryland into slavery. Unable to return home, she channeled her thoughts into activist writing and speaking.
When it came to the cause of women’s suffrage, Harper was convinced that this would only be possible if black and white women worked together. But while Harper initially worked with leaders like Stanton and Anthony, “she was also one of the first women to speak out against them in terms of racism,” Jenkins notes. Harper’s most famous confrontation came when she spoke at the National Convention on Women’s Rights in 1866. “You white women talk about rights here,” Harper told the crowd, calling on them to their lack of female solidarity across racial divisions. “I’m talking about wrongs.”
READ MORE: 7 things you might not know about women’s suffrage
Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823–1893)
Mary Ann Shadd Cary, whose parents used her childhood home as a refuge for runaway slaves, became the first black woman in North America to publish a newspaper, The Provincial Freeman, in which she fearlessly pleaded for abolition. After helping recruit black soldiers for the Civil War and founding a school for the children of freed slaves, she taught at the school by day while attending law school at night, becoming one of the first black women graduated in law in the United States in 1883. When the suffrage movement gained momentum in the 1870s, after the 15th Amendment granted the vote to black men, she became an open activist for them. women’s rights, including the right to vote.
Cary’s legal and editorial background has served her well in the struggle for emancipation. In 1874, she was one of the suffragists to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on the importance of the right to vote. In her remarks, Cary highlighted the injustice of denying women – who were both taxpayers and American citizens – access to the polls. “The crowning glory of US citizenship is that it can be shared equally by people of any nationality, skin tone and gender,” she told the committee.
READ MORE: Milestones in Women’s History: A Timeline
Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954)
Mary Church Terrell, one of the first black women to graduate from college.
GHI Vintage / Universal Images Group / Getty Images
Driven from the traditional suffrage movement by white leaders, black suffragists throughout the 1800s founded their own clubs in cities across the United States. Along with religious organization, “the club movement was the basis for so much black women’s activism in their communities,” Jenkins says. With the creation of the National Association of Women of Color (NACW) in 1896, suffragists Mary Church Terrell and co-founder Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin were instrumental in consolidating black suffrage groups across the country. Their program went beyond women’s empowerment, addressing issues of job training, equal pay, education and childcare opportunities for African Americans.
Terrell, educator, writer and organizer, also focused her work on combating lynching, Jim Crow segregation and convict hiring, a system of forced penal labor. The daughter of former slaves turned successful business owners in Memphis, Tennessee, Terrell was one of the first black women to graduate from college, earning both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Oberlin College. She also became the first black woman appointed to the Washington, DC Board of Education, and led a successful campaign to desegregate the city’s hotels and restaurants.
In an 1898 speech to the National American Women’s Suffrage Association, she summed up her life’s work: “Seeking no favor because of our color, nor favoritism because of our needs, we strike at the bar of justice. , asking for an equal chance.
Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879–1961)
In more than 200 speeches she has given across the country, educator, feminist and suffragist Nannie Helen Burroughs has emphasized the importance of women’s empowerment and economic freedom. Member of the National Association of Women of Color, the National Association of Employees and the Association for the Study of the Life and History of Negroes, she saw the vote as a crucial tool for empowerment, an extension of her lifelong commitment to the education of African American women. One of her enduring accomplishments has been to start and run the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, DC.
Burroughs also spoke of the need to tackle lynchings of black Americans across the country. “The most important issue that preoccupied black activists from 1916 to 1920 – the years before the 19th Amendment – was the lynching and violence of white mobs against blacks,” Jenkins says. For this reason, activists like Burroughs, Terrell and Wells saw the franchise as a tool to create laws and protections for African Americans across the country.
READ MORE: This huge women’s march drowned out a presidential inauguration in 1913
Ida B. Wells (1862–1931)
Journalist, suffragist and progressive activist Ida B. Wells, circa 1890.
R. Gates / Hulton Archives / Getty Images
In addition to being one of the most prominent anti-lynching activists and respected journalists of the turn of the 20th century – she owned two newspapers – Ida B. Wells was also a strong supporter of women’s suffrage. In 1913, Wells, one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, co-founded the Alpha Suffrage Club, Chicago’s first African-American suffrage organization. The club was notable for its focus on educating black women about good citizenship and its advocacy for the election of black politicians.
But Wells and his peers have often faced racism from the broader suffrage movement. When she and other black suffragists attempted to join a march for national suffrage in Washington, DC, in 1913, movement leader Alice Paul asked them to march behind the crowd. Wells refused. “Either I’m coming with you or not at all,” she told the organizers. “I am not taking this position because I personally want recognition. I do this for the future benefit of my entire race. “
READ MORE: When Ida B. Wells began the lynching, threats forced her to leave Memphis
