During Women’s History Month, we celebrate the contributions of women who engaged in the struggle for freedom and justice for all people. For Black women, the struggle was not only against entrenched political and social patriarchy but also against entrenched white supremacy. Some of the most famous Black women in our history embodied this double struggle. For example, most of us associate the name Harriet Tubman with her courageous efforts to lead enslaved people to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Yet later in her long life, she was part of the women’s suffrage movement and helped to form the National Association of Colored Women in 1896. She died in 1913 seven years before the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote. Ida B. Wells is best known for her heroic journalism that exposed the horrors of lynching. She was also a leading Black suffragette. She founded the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago in 1913 and remained politically active for the rest of her amazing life including running as a candidate for the Illinois State Senate in 1930. The video posted below provides additional information about how Harriet Tubman and Ida B. Wells engaged in the “double struggle.”
These two women exemplify many more who led the struggle for both racial justice and political equality. The second picture posted above represents this reality. It is important to remember that these women often faced racism within the larger Suffragette movement. Following the Civil War, some of the early white Suffragette leaders used racist language in their efforts to prioritize voting rights for white women over Black men. Even in some of their public actions, white suffragettes were complicit in the predominant racism of their time. One example comes from a major Suffragette march in Washington, DC in March 1913. Black women were included but were forced to march behind the white women. Ida B. Wells refused to comply with this form of racism. She moved to the front of the march to join the white delegation from her state of Illinois. Even after the 19th Amendment was passed, most Black people were denied the right to vote through state sponsored voter suppression such as poll taxes and so-called literacy tests. It took another 45 years until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed to ensure the right of all American citizens to vote. However, the struggle continues with recent court decisions that rolled back key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as well as efforts to suppress voting through voter ID laws, restrictions on early voting, and the closing of polling places. These current forms of voter suppression disproportionately impact people of color. So as we celebrate the contributions of women who engaged in the double struggle of the past, may we commit ourselves to eliminating that double struggle in our time. This is an important way to honor the image of God in all people.
Click here to read an article from the National Museum of African American History and Culture about five more Black women who led the way in the struggle for the right to vote.