Black Women and the Fight for Universal Suffrage
In January, a federal appeals court found that Arizona’s voter restrictions illegally targeted Native American, Latino and Black voters.
Last month, a court blocked North Carolina’s voter ID law that excluded types of IDs more often held by Black residents.
And just last week, the ACLU announced it’s suing Georgia’s DeKalb County for allegedly unconstitutional voter roll purges.
As we wrap up Black History month (February) and move into Women’s History month (March), it’s worth highlighting that these varied efforts to thwart racist state and local voting laws build on the work of Black suffragists — particularly Black women suffragists — who have been deeply underrepresented in historical accounts. (No, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony weren’t the sole leaders of women’s suffrage.)
Black women suffragists were often discriminated against by their white peers. Leaders like Hattie Purvis, Charlotte Forten Grimké, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, Ida B. Wells and Mary Ann Shadd Cary continued to work with white organizations, but were undervalued, alienated and often excluded to accommodate white Southerners.
In response, Black women went on to form their own local and regional voting rights organizations, such as the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs in Boston (1896) and the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago (1913). After the 19th Amendment passed, Black women continued to fight disenfranchisement resulting from discriminatory state laws, leading the effort that decades later resulted in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The Voting Rights Act contained a key provision (Section 5) that required states with a history of discriminatory election practices to get permission from the Justice Department or a federal court before changing election or voting procedures. However, that provision was removed under a Supreme Court decision in 2013, paving the way for Republican lawmakers to change voting laws to further disenfranchise Black Americans and people of color. They made voter ID requirements more demanding, purged voter rolls, removed mobile early voting booths and early voting, and implemented modern-day poll taxes.
Magnifying the problem is the fact that 9.5 million Americans lack full voting rights because they live in U.S. territories or Washington DC, or have a felony conviction (a status which disproportionately affects people of color).
In this current election season, presidential and local government candidates are campaigning to restore Section 5 of the VRA and expand voting to former felons and citizens in the territories. They’re also taking a page from Black women suffragists who saw universal suffrage as nonnegotiable. Without these passionate Black women leaders who shaped history, how much further behind might we be on voting rights today?