Image via Complex Original
Suffragette, a historical drama depicting the women's voting-rights movement in early 20th-century Britain, caused controversy for including the quote "I'd rather be a rebel than a slave" on T-shirts its white female cast wore in promotional materials.
Originally said by prominent British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst (played by Meryl Streep), the quote whitewashes the movement's history of racism.
In the United States, the 15th Amendment to the Constitution gave black men (but not white women) the right to vote—at least in theory. In reality, however, many black Americans—particularly in Southern states—could not fully exercise that right until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. And although the 19th Amendment technically gave all women the right to vote in 1920, black women's voting rights weren't protected; indeed, many were excluded from the suffragist movement.
To highlight the efforts of black suffragists, NTRSCTN has compiled the following list of women of color who fought on the front lines—even as their work continues to go unrecognized.
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth, a formerly enslaved abolitionist and suffragist, gave us one of the earliest critiques of whitewashed womanhood in her famous speech, “Aint’ I A Woman?” at the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. In it, Truth describes subtle ways her racial identity impacts how she experiences womanhood:
And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?
Mary Church Terrell
Mary Church Terrell was president of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), which formed in Washington, D.C. in 1896 in response to Southern journalist James W. Jacks' attack on the character of black women. In a letter he published, the president of the Missouri Press Association wrote, "[They] were prostitutes and all were thieves and liars."
Using the motto “Lifting as We Climb,” the NACW was an intersectional coalition, fighting tirelessly for the right to vote, as well as pushing anti-lynching campaigns, wage equity, and desegregated transportation.
Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells was a noted African-American journalist and anti-lynching activist who was adamant about addressing racism in the U.S. suffrage movement. She tried to highlight the similarities between the struggles against racism and sexism, despite some white women's unwillingness to see that.
One example of her efforts was a confrontation with noted white suffragist Frances E. Willard. In an 1890 interview with the New York Voice, according to The Root, Willard said, "Better whiskey and more of it is the rallying cry of great, dark-faced mobs ... The safety of [white] women, of childhood, of the home, is menaced in a thousand localities."
Enraged by Willard's strategy of pandering to white women by exploiting the stereotype of black criminality, Wells traveled to Britain in 1893 to pressure white liberals like Willard who, despite their influence, remained apathetic to the lynching and overall plight of black Southerners.
Years later in 1913, Wells was told she couldn't participate in a suffrage parade during then-President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration celebration in Washington, D.C.—because some white suffragists refused to march alongside blacks. But Wells participated anyway.
