Black Women Suffragists | 2nd Annual Digital Black History Month Education Campaign (Day XXI)

We are pleased to share day XXI of 540’s 2nd Annual Digital Black History Month Education Campaign

Black Women Suffragettes | Trailblazers

• Ida B. Wells
• Mary Church Terrell
• Ella Baker
• Rosa Parks
• Angela Davis

Accomplishments

• Ida B. Wells published “Lynch Law of America” in 1900. In it Wells-Barnett argued that without representation in government, this lawlessness would continue to reign. 
• Ida B. Wells-Barnett founded the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago To help obtain voting rights for black women
• The National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACW), formed in 1896 to merge a number of black women’s social clubs together, also included suffrage within its platform.
• Sojourner Truth became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women’s rights.
• Sojourner Truth ‘s Civil War work earned her an invitation to meet President Abraham Lincoln in 1864.

Black Women Suffragists 

As the women’s suffrage movement gained popularity through the nineteenth century, African-American women were increasingly marginalized African-American women dealt not only with the sexism of being withheld the vote but also the racism of white suffragists. When the 15th Amendment passed, white suffragists began pushing harder for voting rights for white women, to the exclusion of black, Native American, and Asian women. The women’s suffrage movement began with women such as Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, and it progressed to women like Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, Ella Baker, Rosa Parks, Angela Davis, and many others. All of these women played very important roles, such as contributing to the growing progress and effort to end African-American women’s disenfranchisement. These women were discriminated against, abused, and raped by white southerners and northerners, yet they remained strong and persistent, and that strength has been passed down from generation to generation. The struggle for the vote did not end with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. In some Southern states, African-American women were unable to freely exercise their right to vote up until the 1960s. However, these difficulties did not deter African-American women in their effort to secure the vote.

“Black women suffragists put themselves in the line of fire over and over again but have been written out of the history books”

About the Campaign

Every day throughout the month of February 540Blog will devote space to sharing Little Known Facts About Black Americans Throughout History. For us every month is Black History Month but we recognize and support the continuous need to take time and space to put a special spotlight on the accomplishments of Black and brown Americans from all ethnicities that have literally changed the course of history and yet have legacies that are not know by the masses.

Sources

1. Wikipedia 
2. Teen Vogue 
3. University of North Carolina Press
4. Wesleyan University 
5. NYT: How The Suffrage Movement Betrayed Black Women