“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!”

Those powerful words are from the abolitionist Sojourner Truth, as she demanded equal rights for women at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in 1851, which came to be known as her “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech. But she was a true powerhouse in all senses of the word, a leader in her time and ours.

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But we must recall the environment she played in, and how, in the years leading up to the U.S. Civil War, the women’s rights and anti-slavery movements found solidarity in their call for equality and emancipation, although schisms soon developed between the two campaigns. Black advocates of the women's vote were often fighting for universal suffrage, regardless of race or class as well as gender, necessarily binding their own cause to the wider civil rights struggle. Courting the support of the segregated Southern states, the National American Woman Suffrage Association feared that alignment with the Black suffrage movement would jeopardize their singular objective.

When the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870, enshrining the right of Black men to vote, the movement became further divided. Groups such as the National Association of Colored Women, led by Mary Church Terrell, and the Alpha Suffrage Club, co-founded by Ida B. Wells, counteracted the increased marginalization of Black American women within the enfranchisement struggle. As with the reality of the 15th Amendment, when the 19th Amendment came into effect in 1920, discriminatory state laws and practices prevented many Black women from exercising their right to vote. The Black suffrage movement would persist right up to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Melanie Llewellyn

Writing since February 2022 · 1 story contributed