When voting rights didn't protect all women

The suffrage movement didn’t protect all women’s right to vote.

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On this landmark 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, historians Martha S. Jones and Daina Ramey Berry reflect on what the 19th Amendment means for Black American women. The women’s suffrage movement was a predominantly white cause, one that sacrificed the involvement of Black suffragists in return for support for the 19th Amendment from Southern states.

The 1920 legislation enfranchised all American women, but it left Black women, particularly those living in the South, to fight racial discrimination when registering to vote and going to the polls. It wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that this type of racial discrimination was prohibited by federal law.

The voting rights fight is still not over, however. There’s evidence that restrictions to voting disproportionately affect minority populations — measures like voter ID laws, voting purges, gerrymandering, and closing polling locations.

The headline to this video has been changed. Previously it was titled: The myth of the 19th amendment

For more of Vox’s coverage on the anniversary of the 19th Amendment:

https://www.vox.com/2020/8/18/2135891...

https://www.vox.com/21356259/19th-ame...

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politi...

For Martha S. Jones’s forthcoming book on Black women’s voting rights fight:
https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/mar...

For Daina Ramey Berry’s book on African American’s women’s history:
http://www.beacon.org/A-Black-Womens-...

For a piece on the importance of photography for Black suffragists:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/ar...


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