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Women’s Rights Movement in the Last Century

Topic: Women's Rights Words: 864 Pages: 4

Introduction

Notably, one of the most notable achievements of the last century was the freedom of women to vote. After a decades-long struggle, women were granted voting rights with the approval of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution on August 26, 1920.1 It declares that the ability of United States citizens to vote should not be denied or limited based on gender. Nevertheless, while the 19th Amendment granted most white women the right to vote, this was not the case for many women of color.2 Therefore, the paper will discuss why the 19th Amendment did not guarantee equal voting rights to all women.

Unequal Rights

Significantly, two myths dominate the history of female rights and the 19th Amendment. The first is that when the Amendment was passed, all American women gained the right to vote.3 Second, no Black American women were granted the right to vote that year.4 The 19th Amendment, nevertheless, did not provide any woman the right to vote; instead, restrictions prohibiting voting for males were declared unconstitutional. Women would still have to traverse a tangle of state regulations regarding their age, citizenship, location, mental ability, and other factors that may prevent women from voting.

The 19th Amendment, enacted a century ago, is often credited with securing American women’s voting right. Despite this, most Black women would have to wait over five decades to exercise that privilege fully.5 When the 19th Amendment was being debated, Southern politicians were especially enraged by the idea of enfranchising masses of African American women, similar to what the 15th Amendment had accomplished for Black men – legally, if not in practice.6 In 1919, before the United States Senate voted on the 19th Amendment, South Carolina Senator Ellison Smith railed against the ‘alien and unsuitable Negro race.’7 Moreover, he declared it a crime against a white civilization that the 15th Amendment provided Black men the right to vote. Smith warned that granting the vote to the female half of the Black race would release unforeseen evils.

White suffragists abandoned Black women who had long struggled for the right to vote in the face of racial hostility. Many of them underestimated the significance of the vote for Black women.8 Considering the disenfranchisement of southern Black males through literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses, they may have viewed Black women as untrustworthy voters and, hence, worthless.9 Indeed, barely two months after the 19th Amendment was enacted, notable African American suffragist and activist Mary Church Terrell addressed a letter to NAACP president Moorfield Storey.10 She emphasized that women of color in the South would be treated horribly and would not be allowed to vote.11 Terrel hoped that the Republicans would take action to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment and aid those who are powerless without the right to citizenship in that part of the country where it is most needed.

After the 19th Amendment, African-American women in many states were denied the same rights. Nonetheless, many Black women came to vote in the fall of 1920.12 According to the Wilmington News Journal, their numbers were exceptionally high in Kent County, Delaware, but officials refused Black women who did not pass the constitutional criteria.13 Mary Church Terrell addressed the nation’s black clubwomen on the pages of National Notes in 1921, the journal of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs.14 Her guidance to African American women on performing their duties in politics echoed the painful experience of the previous year’s campaign season.15

Terrell understood that many of her readers were still marginalized and that they needed to join in politics. Black women recognized that they required the vote much more than most white women to accomplish their racial justice aspirations.16 While the suffrage movement had a solid racist undercurrent, it was not only a white women’s movement.17 Black women joined mixed-race organizations and founded their suffrage organizations.

When the women did vote, they drew strength from opinion leaders and one another. In 1920, Florida professor and women’s club organizer Mary McLeod Bethune traversed her state to urge other Black women to register, only to face harsh opposition at every turn.18 Although black women were able to register to vote, the intimidation persisted. White-robed Ku Klux Klansmen stormed into Bethune’s girls’ school campus in Daytona on Election Day eve, hoping to frighten Black women.19

Currently, the 19th Amendment prohibits states from withholding the right to vote based on gender, just as the 15th Amendment prevents governments from deciding voting power based on race. Nonetheless, many American women lack the absolute right to vote.20 For instance, similar to 1920, women’s accessibility to the polls is controlled by their residence, which coincides with race due to the United States’ history of residential segregation.

Conclusion

The adoption of the 19th Amendment was one of the most significant accomplishments of the previous century since it changed the path of American history and supported women’s voting rights. Nonetheless, the Amendment did not provide all women equal voting rights. For instance, many Black women came to vote in the fall of 1920, but those who did not meet the constitutional qualifications were denied. Women of color faced fierce resistance and did not have absolute voting rights.

Bibliography

Block, Melissa. “Yes, Women Could Vote After The 19th Amendment — But Not All Women. Or Men.” Nrp. 2020. Web.

De Witte, Melissa. “The 19th Amendment is a Milestone, but not the Endpoint, for Women’s Rights in America, Says Stanford Historian.” Stanford News, 2020. Web.

Gidlow, Liette. “The Sequel: The Fifteenth Amendment, the Nineteenth Amendment, and Southern Black Women’s Struggle to Vote.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 17, no. 3 (2018): 433-449. Web.

Jones, Martha S. “For Black Women, the 19th Amendment Didn’t End Their Fight to Vote.” National Geographic, 2020. Web.

Kennedy, Lesley. “Despite the Adoption of the 19th Amendment, Many Women of Color, Immigrant Women and Poorer Women Continued to Face Barriers at the Polls.” History. 2021. Web.

Waxman, Olivia B. “It’s a Struggle They Will Wage Alone.’ How Black Women Won the Right to Vote.” Time. 2020. Web.

Footnotes

  1. Lesley Kennedy, “Despite the Adoption of the 19th Amendment, Many Women of Color, Immigrant Women and Poorer Women Continued to Face Barriers at the Polls,” History. 2021. Web.
  2. Lesley Kennedy, “Despite the Adoption of the 19th Amendment.”
  3. Martha S Jones, “For Black Women, the 19th Amendment Didn’t End Their Fight to Vote.” National Geographic, 2020. Web.
  4. Martha S Jones, “For Black Women, the 19th Amendment Didn’t End Their Fight to Vote.” Web.
  5. Melissa Block, “Yes, Women Could Vote After The 19th Amendment — But Not All Women. Or Men,” Nrp. 2020. Web.
  6. Melissa Block, “Yes, Women Could Vote After The 19th Amendment — But Not All Women. Or Men.”
  7. Melissa De Witte. “The 19th Amendment is a Milestone, but not the Endpoint, for Women’s Rights in America, Says Stanford Historian,” Stanford News, 2020. Web.
  8. Melissa De Witte. “The 19th Amendment is a Milestone, but not the Endpoint, for Women’s Rights in America, Says Stanford Historian.”
  9. Melissa Block, “Yes, Women Could Vote After The 19th Amendment — But Not All Women. Or Men.”
  10. Melissa Block, “Yes, Women Could Vote After The 19th Amendment — But Not All Women. Or Men.”
  11. Martha S Jones, “For Black Women, the 19th Amendment Didn’t End Their Fight to Vote.”
  12. Martha S Jones, “For Black Women, the 19th Amendment Didn’t End Their Fight to Vote.”
  13. Liette Gidlow, “The Sequel: The Fifteenth Amendment, the Nineteenth Amendment, and Southern Black Women’s Struggle to Vote,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 17, no. 3 (2018): 445. Web.
  14. Liette Gidlow, “The Sequel: The Fifteenth Amendment, the Nineteenth Amendment, and Southern Black Women’s Struggle to Vote,” 445.
  15. Melissa De Witte. “The 19th Amendment is a Milestone, but not the Endpoint, for Women’s Rights in America, Says Stanford Historian.”
  16. Melissa De Witte. “The 19th Amendment is a Milestone, but not the Endpoint, for Women’s Rights in America, Says Stanford Historian.”
  17. Martha S Jones, “For Black Women, the 19th Amendment Didn’t End Their Fight to Vote.”
  18. Martha S Jones, “For Black Women, the 19th Amendment Didn’t End Their Fight to Vote.”
  19. Liette Gidlow, “The Sequel: The Fifteenth Amendment, the Nineteenth Amendment, and Southern Black Women’s Struggle to Vote,” 446.
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