THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE 19TH AMENDMENT
Suffragists marching on October 23, 1915 Photo © Library of Congress / George Grantham Bain Collection
INTRODUCTION BY HOLLY O. VAUGHN WAGNER, ESQUIRE
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Reflections on the Right to Vote
t is my honor to introduce stories from Delaware attorneys on the personal impact of the 19th Amendment. None of the authors were alive when women were first granted the right to vote, but the establishment of a right so fundamental naturally colors the lives of those of us who continue to benefit from the work of the renowned suffragists. Celebration of this historic event is warranted, as is consideration of its limitations. The 19th Amendment guarantees that a citizen’s right to vote cannot be denied based on the person’s sex, but that alone is not a guarantee that a woman may vote. Many states continued to disenfranchise women of color or in poverty by enacting voting requirements designed to shut them out: poll taxes, literacy or constitutional tests, and grandfather clauses. Forty-five years after passage of the 19th Amendment, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally enfranchised Black women. It would be another 10 years before the Latinx vote was secured, when the Voting Rights Act was expanded to forbid English-only language requirements.
Holly Vaughn Wagner is Deputy Director for the Division of Research, where she drafts legislation, researches policy matters, and promotes Oxford comma awareness. She can be reached at Holly.Vaughn_ Wagner@delaware.gov.
Illustrations by Mark S. Vavala
Interestingly, the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment coincides with a resurgence of civil protests across the country. We have all had reason to reflect even more deeply on civil rights issues this year, and it is in this context that we asked several women of the Delaware Bar to share what the 19th Amendment has meant to them. Sources:
1. Rice, Jen, How Texas Prevented Black Women From Voting Decades After The 19th Amendment, Houston Public Media, Jun. 28, 2019 (https://www.kut.org/ post/how-texas-prevented-black-women-voting-decades-after-19th-amendment) 2. Ed., The Racial History of the ‘Grandfather Clause’, Oct. 22, 2013 (https://www. tpr.org/post/racial-history-grandfather-clause) 3. Blakemore, Erin, How the U.S. Voting Rights Act was Won – And Why It’s Under Fire Today, Aug. 6, 2020 (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/reference/ united-states-history/history- voting-rights-act/)
DSBA Bar Journal | September 2020
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