Women's Suffrage (HER)story

women's suffrage [her]story

The Black Women’s Mural represents over a century of Black women’s intersectional activism and justice, and its central theme is celebrating the centennial anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Women’s Suffrage Movement was a multi-century-long battle for women to participate in the promises of American democracy. Still, it isn't easy to understand what led to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment without some knowledge of what proceeded it.

In 1776, the Continental Congress formally severed its connections to Great Britain. Each of the thirteen original colonies wrote State Constitutions to replace the existing colonial charters. New Jersey, the fourth colony to sever ties with Britain, was unique in that women’s right to vote was assumed in its first State Constitution in 1776. “All inhabitants” who owned property at a designated amount, including women, could vote at that time. That right was re-affirmed in 1790. Three years later, NJ became the third state to adopt the United States Constitution and their State Constitution’s election law was modified to include the words “he or she.” According to Irwin N. Gertzog’s book chapter “Female Suffrage in New Jersey, 1790 -1807,” in Women, Politics, and the Constitution, it is unclear how many women voted in 1790. They noted increasing numbers of women turned out to vote between 1797 and 1807, once elections were held at the township level (making polls more accessible), when elections were hotly contested, and secret ballots became the standard (Gertzog et al., 1990). Women could vote as long as they were free, voted where they lived, and were worth fifty pounds in property — no matter if they were black, white, married, widowed, or never married.

In 1807, after an instance of widespread voter fraud while trying to determine the Essex County seat, State legislature reformed election law again: “In October 1807, the legislature limited the vote to “free, white, male citizens” 21 years of age (Acts of the 32nd New Jersey General Assembly, November 16, 1807, 14). All at once, state lawmakers had disenfranchised free blacks, noncitizens, and women in an action that they believed was justified by the need to rationalize the administration of elections and to reduce political corruption (Gertzog et al., 1990).” Foreshadowing what was to come for women nationwide, women’s right to vote was no longer a protected right in New Jersey.

Formally, the Women’s Suffrage Movement is credited to have begun in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Between July 19-20, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Coffin Mott, Martha Coffin Wright, Mary Ann McClintock, and Jane Hunt organized over 300 attendees, predominantly women, to demand more rights and raise “the woman question.” No Black women were invited to attend. However, in future conventions, they refused to be excluded and sit on the sidelines. For example, in 1851, Sojourner Truth delivered her famous “Ain’t I a Woman” speech at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. Though Truth’s recorded speech pattern has been greatly debated, Black feminist historians have preserved this event as one of many that defined Black women’s participation and nuanced consideration of Black women’s status in the Women’s Suffrage Movement. (See resources below for more information.)

This “honor roll” shows signatories of the Declaration of Sentiments at the Seneca Falls Convention for women's rights in 1848. (Creative Commons)

Courtesy of the Library of Congress; Adopting the motto “Lifting all We Climb,” several black women’s clubs joined forces in 1896 to form the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs.—National Women's History Museum

Several of the most historic speeches and books arguing for the emancipation of enslaved people and women’s right to vote precluded the American Civil War. Activists like Maria Stewart, Frederick Douglass, Lucy Stone, and more delivered speeches in front of public audiences to build awareness around the injustices of slavery and women’s rights. Writers and poets like Harriet Jacobs, William Lloyd Garrison, and Charlotte Forten Grimke circulated their writings in essays and books detailing enslaved Black people's conditions. Increasing numbers of people, especially in northern states like New Jersey that began gradually abolishing slavery in 1804, were growing dissatisfied with individual states having the right to practice slaveholding as U.S territory continued expanding West. In 1861, Confederate states seceded to maintain their rights and the first battles of the Civil War took place.

Racial and gender tensions propagated a fissure in American race relations. The emancipation, signed by President Lincoln, of all enslaved people in 1863 introduced new opportunities and challenges for all Americans. Between 1865 and 1870, Congress passed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, which effectively abolished chattel slavery, affirmed all men’s access to the vote, and prohibited states from denying the right to vote based on race or color. The Fifteenth Amendment was hotly contested by white suffragists, like Susan B. Anthony, who believed that white women should be able to vote before African Americans. For many white suffragists, accessing the vote was a competition, but Black suffragists like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper knew “we are all bound up together” in our struggle for equality.

Twelve years after Reconstruction began, newly freed African Americans found their recently gained rights stripped away. Jim Crow laws were being written into Southern state legislature and being practiced socially in Northern States. It took several more decades and many acts of protests for all Americans to get their constitutional right to vote. The Nineteenth Amendment, passed on June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, granted women access to the vote. However, Black Americans continued to experience discrimination, intimidation, and violence based on their race and gender when attempting to exercise their right to vote. Black New Jersey women like Florence Spearing Randolph and other members of the NJ State Federation of Colored Women’s Club recognized all there was to gain from equal access to the vote. While white women’s right to vote may have been ratified in 1920, the implementation of that right was not solidified for Black women until the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.

A.R. Waud. "The first vote." 1867. Library of Congress: LC-USZ62-19234 .

Timeline

The Black Women’s Mural and the women featured represent three major activist movements: the Movements for Women’s Suffrage, Civil Rights, and Black Lives. Below is a timeline of some key events in the United States Voting Rights History.

To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key.