Yes, Women Could Vote After The 19th Amendment — But Not All Women. Or Men

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Nannie Helen Burroughs holds a banner reading, «Banner State Woman’s National Baptist Convention as she stands with other African American women, photographed between 1905 and 1915. Burroughs was an educator and activist who advocated for greater civil rights for African Americans and women.

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The Nudge And Tie Breaker That Took Women’s Suffrage From Nay To Yea

Yet, even after that milestone, millions of people — women and men alike — were still excluded from the vote, as many barriers to suffrage remained.

The fight over the amendment was not just about sex; it was also deeply entwined with race.

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Early suffragist leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton (left) and Susan B. Anthony later split off from their alliance with abolitionists.

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2020 Election: Secure Your Vote

Case in point: In 1919, just before the U.S. Senate voted on the 19th amendment, South Carolina Sen. Ellison Smith fulminated against what he called the «alien and unfit [Negro] race.

He proclaimed it «a crime against white civilization that Black men were granted the vote with the 15th amendment.

Extending the vote to «the other half of the Negro race, Smith thundered, would unleash new «evils.

In the face of racist opposition, white suffragists betrayed the Black women who had also long fought for the right to vote, says Elaine Weiss, author of The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote.

«We have to acknowledge, Weiss says, «that [white suffragists] used as one of their politically expedient arguments, ‘You know, there are more white women who will be voting than Black women. So don’t worry. White supremacy is not going to be endangered.'

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African American suffragist and activist Mary Church Terrell.

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Mabel Ping-Hua Lee became a powerful voice in the suffrage movement starting as a teenager.

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Voting rights activist Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa) of the Yankton Sioux Nation was prominent in the women’s suffrage community.

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A portrait of Martha S. Jones’ great-great-grandmother, Susan Davis, who was born enslaved in Kentucky.

Martha S. Jones

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Martha S. Jones

A portrait of Martha S. Jones’ great-great-grandmother, Susan Davis, who was born enslaved in Kentucky.

Martha S. Jones

For historian Martha Jones, the ratification of the 19th amendment «marks for African American women a start, not a finish.

«It fuels a new chapter in the struggle for voting rights in the United States, she says, «a movement that Black women will lead all the way to 1965 and passage of the Voting Rights Act.

«One of the lessons that we learn when we compare 1920 and 2020, she continues, «is that voting rights is never a given. It’s never a guarantee. It’s not a done deal in the United States.

In her office, Jones can look up at a visual reminder of that long history.

Hanging on the wall is a portrait of her great-great-grandmother, Susan Davis, who was born enslaved in Kentucky.

Jones likes to imagine her then-80-year-old ancestor on election day 1920, hitching up her horse and buggy, riding into town, «and getting into that line — a segregated line, but a line nonetheless — that would permit her and her daughter Lillian both to cast their first ballots.

«I can’t say for sure that Susan and Lillian voted on that day, Jones says. «I sure hope they did.