The year 2020 will be remembered for a lot of reasons, but one milestone we can鈥檛 forget is the centennial of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. On Aug. 18, 1920, its newfound existence
The Nineteenth Amendment didn鈥檛 start or end the fight for women鈥檚 suffrage, however. That fight was long and many of its earliest activists didn鈥檛 live to cast their ballots. Black women were among the first suffragettes, yet they have
As Liza Mundy writes in
Many histories of the suffragist movement end there鈥攂ut so much more was still to come. Some states disenfranchised women鈥攑articularly black and immigrant women鈥攂y instituting poll taxes, literacy tests and onerous registration requirements. And many women didn鈥檛 yet see themselves as having a role, or a say, in the public sphere. People 鈥渄on鈥檛 immediately change their sense of self,鈥� says Christina Wolbrecht, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame. 鈥淲omen who came of political age before the 19th Amendment was ratified remained less likely to vote throughout their entire lives.鈥�
We鈥檙e talking about the Nineteenth Amendment, the suffragist movement and the Black women it forgot.
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