The roles of African American women in the fight to vote

‘BRILLIANT and POLITICALLY SAVVY’ The roles of Black women in the ght to vote

By Jessica Bliss and Jasmine Vaughn-Hall

USA TODAY Network

In a pair of three-story brick row houses on an avenue in northwest Baltimore, Margaret Hawkins and Augusta Chissell lived side by side.

Driven to the same city block by the forces of residential segregation, they were united by a common ambition — the push for racial and women’s equality.

Streets away lived another activist with similar sentiments. A teacher and mother, Estelle Young was eager to see Black women, including one day her own daughter, earn a spot at the polls. Young befriended the two women down the road.

Together they became a neighborly powerhouse, leading the campaign for suffrage from their own living rooms.

Their names aren’t familiar to most, suppressed by a century of fragmented history, but their activism mirrors a movement across the country.

More than 100 years ago, as a groundswell of momentum pushed toward giving women the right to vote, Black women nationwide stood up to join the cause.

Even when racism tore through the movement — undercutting their efforts and severing the strength of a united female front — they were undeterred.

What Black suffragists achieved greatly shaped the fight for women’s rights.

In the wake of the centennial celebration of the 19th Amendment, a history once silenced is slowly resurfacing. Stories of the relentless efforts of women of color have found a new platform, providing a chance to elevate what has been untold.

“The traditional narrative does often leave out large groups of women who don’t fit into the white, middle-class story of women’s rights,” said Earnestine Jenkins, a professor of art and researcher of African American history at the University of Memphis. “You have to be honest about the racism in the movement and the extent they kept women of color out of the movement. ... You have to look for those hidden histories because otherwise, you are not going to get the complete story.”

Once united, then divided

In the throes of the Civil War, as the North and South raged over Black rights, the strong parallels between the situations of slaves and the situations of women became evident.

Convinced that freedom for one would be victory for both, white women such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton became devoted abolitionists.

When the war ended, the alignment did not last.

After the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments, which gave voting rights to Black men but not to women, Anthony — a former stationmaster for the Underground Railroad — became infuriated.

“I will cut off this right arm of mine before I ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman,” she said.

The intemperance alienated some suffragists, and by 1875, when Anthony drafted the amendment that would bear her name, the movement had split.

The aftershocks of abolition shook the South. Many feared any push for a law that would give not only white women, but also Black women, a place at the polls. A new reality set in.

“They realized that there really wasn’t as much common ground between African American suffragists and white, middle-class suffragists as there might have been in a society that wasn’t so polarized in questions of race,” said Susan Ware, author of “Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote.”

Guided by ‘a broader vision’

Unlike the predominantly white suffrage leaders — whose social privilege allowed them to look at voting rights through the lens of gender alone — Black suffragists had more to consider.

Jim Crow laws in the South undermined voting rights won by Black men. They were made to use separate drinking fountains, sit in segregated seats at restaurants and on trains. They even swore on separate Bibles in court.

Literacy tests and high poll taxes prevented many from casting their ballots. Though Black women fervently wanted a place at the polls, they wanted to ensure that Black men could be there, too.

“They didn’t have the luxury to just be working for their own vote,” Ware said. “They were trying to improve conditions for their race and community. It was a broader vision.”

They knew having the vote would help empower them against discrimination. So they took up the campaign alongside the white women of higher class and social status.

For a time, they were allies in the movement — hailed for voices they elevated.

‘Power added to inuence’

Among the most eloquent of those was Frances E.W. Harper.

An orphan and young poet, Harper was inspired to take up the abolitionist cause when her home state of Maryland passed a fugitive slave law, allowing even free Blacks such as Harper to be arrested and sold into slavery.

She formed alliances with strong figures in the suffrage movement, including Anthony, and began giving anti-slavery speeches throughout the northern U.S. Through her powerful prose and poetry, she elevated issues of racism, feminism and class.

“The ballot in the hands of woman means power added to influence,” Harper said in an address before the World’s Congress of Representative Women at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. “How well she will use that power I can not foretell.”

In this battle, like many others to come, the women were not equals.

Wisconsin Rep. Shelia Stubbs pauses to recognize the late Vel Phillips during the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Celebration at the Capitol in Madison in June 2019. Phillips was the first woman and African American woman on the Milwaukee Common Council. She died in 2018. Wisconsin was the first state to ratify the

19th Amendment. ANGELA PETERSON / MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL / USA TODAY NETWORK

In 1890, the two largest rival women’s suffrage organizations — once divided over issues such as race — decided the only way to win the vote was with a united front. They merged, forming the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

It was the dominant white suffrage organization of the time, known at times to hold conventions that excluded Black women.

Still women of color persevered in a fight seemingly separate — and yet the same.

Building inuence through community

In west Baltimore, Hawkins, Chissell and Young found kindred spirits in each other, using their neighborhood connections to pioneer for equal voting rights.

As leaders in The DuBois Circle — an African American women’s club founded in 1907 — they brought women of their race together for change.

At first, the group “focused on literature, the arts and famous Negroes, as they called it,” said Beverly Carter, historian and archivist for the DuBois Circle.

They sought knowledge and a way to connect it to the community, and through it, they expanded scope.

“They participated in political activities, civic activities ... and as a group, they addressed the suffrage issue,” Carter said.

They built influence through community, establishing social groups and engaging churches to spearhead change. They developed robust grassroots networks.

It wasn’t long before Young founded the Progressive Women’s Suffrage Club, in which Hawkins became the vice president and Chissell was the secretary.

They joined a collaboration of Black women nationwide, many

Holding to the motto “Lifting the National Association of Colored

“The No. 1 reason the South was not going to touch suffrage was race,” said who organized under the National AssoCarole Bucy, a county historian in Nashciation of Colored Women, the largest ville, Tennessee. “The position of the federation of Black women’s clubs. woman was relatively inconsequential.”

Their collective effort, said Despite early unity with abolitionSally Roesch Wagner, editor of ists and the “votes for all” rhetoric, “The Women’s Suffrage Movewhen it came to the final push for sufment” anthology, was both “brilfrage, gender equality superseded liant and politically savvy.” racial equality for the movement’s upper-middle-class white leaders. An attack on If the women’s vote was to Southern sensibilities be won, Black women could

as We Climb,” Mary Church Ter‘For the future bene t rell became the first president of of my whole race’ Women, which endorsed the womMany refused to be silenced. en’s suffrage movement in 1912. Among them, Ida B. Wells

An influential educator and activspoke louder than most. ist, Terrell was born to former A journalist and newspaper edislaves in Memphis, Tennessee. tor, Wells founded the Alpha Suffrage Her parents used their freedom to Club for African American women, become small-business owners. the first for Black women in Illinois.

Terrell, hardworking and ambitious, In 1913, Wells and other activbecame one of the first ists traveled from Illinois to African American women Washington to participate in to earn a college degree. the Woman Suffrage Proces

She moved to Washsion — the first major national ington, D.C., becoming event held for the movement. the first Black woman At first, Black suffragists had to earn a position on the been rejected from joining, but board of education. Wells and others wrote letters

Terrell traveled nationasking to allow Black women wide, quoted in papers to participate. Eventually, from east to west on polarorganizers acquiesced, with izing topics of “the Negro one condition — Black suffragwomen” and “the race ists would march in the back. problem.” When it came A National It was meant to assuage the to suffrage, she could not Association of feelings of Southern white ignore her Southern roots. Colored Women’s women, but Wells refused

In her visits back to TenConvention the terms. Poised to forcibly nessee and neighboring delegate’s badge insert herself in the processtates, she noted the disfeaturing Mary sion, she and a select few othenfranchisement of Blacks Burnett Talbert. ers, including Terrell, marched — and the tactics used by PHOTO ILLUSTRATION; alongside the white women white suffragists there. COLLECTION OF from their delegations.

The South decried the idea THE SMITHSONIAN “Either I go with you or not of suffrage. Many argued NATIONAL MUSEUM at all,” Wells said. “I am not that the plea rallied against OF AFRICAN taking this stand because I their Southern sensibilities AMERICAN HISTORY personally wish for recogniand attacked the sanctity of a AND CULTURE tion. I am doing it for the future woman’s place in the home. benefit of my whole race.”

not stand in the spotlight.

‘What will the Negro women do with the vote?’

After 41 years of debate, Congress approved the 19th Amendment on June 4, 1919.

By summer 1920, 35 of the nation’s 48 states had voted for ratification. Eight states, six of them Southern, rejected it. Three refused to weigh in.

Only two states remained undecided: North Carolina and Tennessee.

Just one needed to vote in favor to make women’s suffrage the law of the land.

On May 18, 1920, three months before Tennessee lawmakers were to consider passing the 19th Amendment, Juno Frankie Pierce spoke at the first meeting of the newly formed League of Women Voters of Tennessee.

As the only African American female to speak that day, Pierce addressed the convention for the women of her race.

“What will the Negro women do with the vote?” she asked those gathered in the House chamber of the state Capitol. “We will stand by the white women.”

She told those at the meeting that Black women sought suffrage to receive “a square deal.”

Suffragists saw Tennessee as their last hope. And their worst nightmare.

Within the state, three factions emerged. Two groups of suffragists — one more extreme than the other — sought ratification, while one vocal contingent of anti-suffragists amplified the vicious opposition.

“The antis waved the race card mightily,” Bucy said. “And so did the suffragists in a less flamboyant way.”

White suffragists often avoided integrating issues of race into their campaigns. If they did speak of it, it came in the form of assurance that Black women would not upend the balance at the ballot box.

“They used the accepted fare of racial prejudice,” Bucy said. “They said: ‘Look, there are already laws that keep African American men from voting. Those will still be intact. So if you are afraid women voting will bring in all these Black people voting, it won’t.’

“You can’t say the suffragists were racially tolerant people.”

The vote won, women of color still turned away

When it became clear that in the final fight for the vote, hard-won civil rights might be undermined, it was Black suffragists who chose tolerance.

“They asked: How do we hold back our anger? How do we hold back our frustration for the greater cause?” Wagner said. “They negotiated the racism that was endemic in the movement to move the cause forward.”

The battle had been longer and uglier than anyone expected, but in the end, Tennessee came through, becoming the 36th and final state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment.

After the 19th Amendment passed in 1920, Chissell wrote a recurring column in the Baltimore Afro-American called “A Primer for Women Voters.”

It was “for the benefit of women who wish to inform themselves in regard to their newly acquired duties and privileges as voters and citizens.” Readers were urged to send Chissell questions, and she’d answer them in her column.

The Progressive Women’s Suffrage Club started teaching voter education classes.

But the reality was, though women finally secured the right to vote nationwide, Black women would be routinely turned away from the ballot box for decades to come.

It wasn’t until 1965, after the

Voting Rights Act and subsequent court decisions, that tools of disenfranchisement that targeted people of color — including poll taxes and literacy tests — became outlawed.

A chance to ‘rethink our history’

Understanding the racial and class dynamics of this historical moment does not diminish the significance of the amendment or the activism that led to its ratification.

“In 2020, we have an opportunity to celebrate the vote,” Wagner said, “and also take accountability, to rethink our history.”

Fully realizing gender equality, racial justice and voter fairness

Painting, oil on canvas, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, by Larry Walker, 1994. Wells-Barnett, who worked as a teacher and a journalist in Memphis, was an important advocate for African Americans’ and women’s rights. She formed a suffrage organization for African American women while living in Chicago and protested efforts to segregate African American women in a 1913 Washington, D.C., suffrage parade.

TENNESSEE STATE MUSEUM

means understanding the past — and giving credit to the neighborly powerhouses of women who won it.

In front of the three-story houses where Chissell and Hawkins lived stands a new historic marker, highlighting the suffrage efforts that transpired in and around the homes.

It’s one of 11 that will commemorate Maryland women, events and sites associated with the suffrage movement.

And, with new vigilance, the markers probably won’t be the last.

There are still records to read, transcribe and document. There are still more hidden histories of the suffrage movement to be revealed.