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Tomorrow , August 6, we mark 55 years since the Voting Rights Act became law. https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=100
For the women of Vanguard, this was their 15th and 19th Amendments rolled into one - giving teeth to the promise of voting rights that did not accommodate racism or sexism. https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/martha-s-jones/vanguard/9781541618619/
It had been a long an arduous journey to the Voting Rights Act, one travelled by sheroes like Mary McLeod Bethune. Bethune had been born during Reconstruction and faced off against the KKK over voting rights in the 1920s. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/mary-mcleod-bethune-vanguard-more-than-50-years-black-progress-180975202/
The road to the Voting Rights Act was paved by the efforts of Hallie Quinn Brown who headed the National Association of Colored Women in 1920. How, she confronted, would Black women overcome Jim Crow laws that continued to keep them from the polls? https://www.neh.gov/article/how-black-suffragists-fought-right-vote-and-modicum-respect
Even with a 19th Amendment, Black women were barred from the polls by grandfather clauses. This, even as the US Supreme Court had declared them unconstitutional in the 1915 case of Guinn v. United States, brought by the NAACP. H/T @NPRCodeSwitch. https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/10/21/239081586/the-racial-history-of-the-grandfather-clause
Black women in 1920, like Black men, saw their votes undercut by whites-only primaries. In 1944, the Supreme Court in Smith v. Allwright determined that Black voters could not be barred from party sponsored primary elections. Another NAACP victory. https://www.naacpldf.org/case-issue/landmark-smith-v-allwright/
Poll taxes kept Black women from the polls after 1920; courts let them stand even as they disadvantaged Black voters. The 24th Amendment made poll taxes unconstitutional in 1964, 44 years after the 19th Amendment. Has your state ratified it? Maybe not. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-24
No story of the Voting Rights Act would be complete without recounting how Black women and men risked their lives to get their right to cast ballots up front on the agenda in Washington. #SayTheirNames
Commemorating the Voting Rights Act of 1965 must honor Septima Clark, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Diane Nash. Who would you add to this list? #sayhername
This photo is among my favorites. Here, is the signing ceremony for the Voting Rights Act in 1865. You likely recognize many of the men: Lyndon Johnson, Ralph Abernathy, Martin King. The last man on the right is Clarence Mitchell, the NAACP’s lobbyist.
In Vanguard, I conclude with a look at the three Black women on the far right. They are at the signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 because they too have played critical roles in its passage. Do you know who they are?
