THE TRUTH ABOUT THE 19TH AMENDMENT AND THE STRUGGLE FOR BLACK WOMEN’S VOTING RIGHTS; other minority women left out too
NOTE: The article below was originally written in 2020 before Roe V. Wade was dismantled. It is share hear as a reminder that women's rights have been attained through advocacy and one of the areas that require the active pursuit of freedom is that are of voting rights. Whater the issue is abortion ir equal pay, the change could not hapen without the right to vote.
By Mona Austin
On the 18th of August in 2020, women’s empowerment and political groups saluted the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment. For Black women the centennial of the constitutional right to vote is a partial celebration, however. To know this history is to appreciate what it means for Senator Kamala Harris to be presidential candidate Joe Biden’s potential vice president of United States. For African-American women the miles to this historic moment are countless, while their collective labor in the context of voting rights particularly for Black women is often ignored.
When the 19th Amendment was ratified into law in 1920, it was not impartial. Black women remained disenfranchised from fully engaging in the voting process after its passage. Therefore, the history of women’s suffrage in the US for black women is not the same as it is for white women. This shunning was deliberate. The same unwritten oppressive conditions that blocked access to the ballot applied to Native American, Asian and Hispanic women also waged their own fight against this discrimination.
Enthusiasm for the prospect of a woman of color to occupy next to the highest seat in government, as well as disconnected reporting on the subject swallows this incongruence in applying the 19th. Women’s rights activist and abolitionist Sojouner Truth played an instrumental role to attain women’s suffrage as she once said, “for all of creation.” She has sometimes been overlooked while white suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are lauded.
Many black fore-mothers in the movement for both voting and civil rights continued to fight for complete fairness and equality for black women, while white women‘s organizations began to fade after the 19th was signed, failing to be all inclusive in their overall quest. Victory for black women voters would finally come when over four decades later Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson signed the true cause de celebre —the Voting Rights Act,—which spelled out that voting is an equal right for all, while further equalizing the full right to vote for Black.
THE TRUTH IS THAT IN WRITING, it appeared that all women were given the constitutional right to vote at the time the 19th was signed, but IN PRACTICE, this historic accomplishment primarily benefitted white women. Once voting was legalized “in nsme only”, Black women are voting in pockets of the country, experiencing similar roadblocks to voting that Black men encountered. Three million women living below the Mason-Dixon line remained disfranchised after the passage of the amendment.
Their commitment to the cause firm, Black women did not waver in the much longer journey toward voting than their counterpart. Truth had died in 1883. Other Black heroines of the movement emerged at the root level of political engagement. The freedom they fought for was universal.
Speaking to Time Magazine, Black writer and historian Martha S. Jones addresses the activism of Black women in secuuring voting rights so that their contribution to freedom and equality for women in Americais not forgotten. The article 'It's a Struggle They Will Wage Alone.' How Black Women Won the Right to Vote sheds light on the Black women suffragists who carried on the fight for voting rights, and the evolving nuances to this history that have contributed to all women having a voice in America society today, both in and outside of politics.
