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So, this piece from @SheilaKatz1 of @NCJW on what did, and didn't happen with the passing of the 19th Amendment, & what we can do to fight for voting rights now, is key.
Want to hold up some of the BIPOC suffrage leaders she names---so 1/x thread. https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/the-unfinished-work-of-the-19th-amendment/
Want to hold up some of the BIPOC suffrage leaders she names---so 1/x thread. https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/the-unfinished-work-of-the-19th-amendment/
A lot of people now know that Ida B. Wells was a key voice in the suffrage conversation: https://suffrage100ma.org/ida-b-wells/
But people don't often talk about Sojourner Truth as a suffragette--even though she was advocating for voting rights for both Black people and women in the 1850's. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sojourner-truth
And fewer people know about Mary Church Terrell, who started as an anti-lynching activist and helped found & led the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), through which she lobbied for Black women's suffrage. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-church-terrell
Latina and Hispanic suffragettes also don't get a lot of attention, like Adelina (Nina) Otero Warren, working in New Mexico, who ran for Congress immediately after the 1920 passing of the 19th Amendment:
https://ninaotero.sfps.info/about_us/who_was_nina_otero_warren
https://ninaotero.sfps.info/about_us/who_was_nina_otero_warren
Or the LA-based Maria Guadalupe Evangelina Lopéz, who was the Spanish translator for the California suffrage movement, and who gave many speeches about suffrage in the 1910s in both Spanish and English: https://my.lwv.org/california/diablo-valley/article/suffragists-you-need-meet-maria-guadalupe-evangelina-lop%C3%A9z
Or Aurora Lucero-White Lea, who fought for the use of Spanish in public schools, spoke at a major suffrage march on the New Mexico capitol and insisted on bilingual access to suffrage publications and speeches:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_Lucero-White_Lea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_Lucero-White_Lea
There were Asian-American suffrage activists as well, like Dr. Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, a Chinese immigrant who, at 16, led almost 10,000 people in the New York suffrage parade & was a major activist in the movement. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mabel-ping-hua-lee
Ironically? Or maybe just racist-ally, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act prevented Chinese immigrants from attaining citizenship and voting; she herself was not granted the right to vote until that act was repealed in 1943.
(Needless to say, poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation &, often, physical assault and/or fabricated criminal charges prevented Black and Latinx women from voting until the VRA in 1965, which was then gutted by SCOTUS in 2013, and why we must fight harder now--more below.)
This might be a good time to note that, yes, many of the white suffragettes were racist and into eugenics. We have to be thoughtful about how we talk about their legacy while also naming what they did accomplish.
Interestingly, many of the white suffragettes drew great inspiration and understanding from Haudenosaunee life and culture: https://www.wxxinews.org/post/100-years-ago-haudenosaunee-women-influenced-suffragists
But that doesn't mean Native American women got the vote in 1920. Native Americans, including Native American women, did not have the right to vote in every U.S. state until 1962.
And we can still lift up early women activists for voting and citizenship rights, like Zitkála-Šá: https://www.nps.gov/people/zitkala-sa.htm
And Inshata Theumba: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/91283/retrobituaries-native-american-writer-and-activist-susette-la-flesche
So! A voting anniversary! And there's an election coming up! In which our voting rights are very much at risk! Some really good, concrete action items for what you can do in this piece. Advocate. Learn. Volunteer. There's stuff you can do.
Do it: https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/the-unfinished-work-of-the-19th-amendment/
Do it: https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/the-unfinished-work-of-the-19th-amendment/
