Black Women's Experiences with the Equal Rights Movement
Despite presenting a vision of equality for all women, the suffrage movement was highly racialized. Although black and white women fought for suffrage and equal rights, they did so in segregated organizations. Throughout history, white women typically led civil rights organizations and set the agenda, barring black women from these organizations and their sponsored activities. Consequently, black women had to create separate branches of a given organization or movement and march separately from white women in suffrage and equal rights parades.
Following the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, the battle for suffrage ended for white women. For African American women and women of color, the outcome was less clear. After women gained the right to vote in 1920, the existent segregation between black and white women did not prevent white women from electing other white women to political office. For example, following the “Women for Congress” campaign in 1924, four Republican white women were elected into the Illinois House, demonstrating that women could successfully navigate the election process. By 1928, white women proved that they were as interested in elections as men and that, at least in the Northern states, they carried enough influence to swing elections.
African American women and women of color, particularly those residing in one of the southern states, continued to face various barriers. In the beginning, black women in the North were able to register to vote, allowing quite a few to become actively involved in politics. Black women’s political engagement from the antebellum period to the suffrage movement helped strengthen and define their political activism post-1920. Aiming to combat post-World War I anti-black racial violence, particularly in the South, black women’s engagement in electoral politics and activism expanded.
One such woman was Annie Simms Banks. Born in Brandenburg, Kentucky, Banks was an African American educator and political figure. On March 3, 1920, she became the first African American female elected as a delegate at the 7th Congressional District Republican Convention in Kentucky. She was appointed member of the Rules Committee.
Despite Banks achievement, African American women were still subjected to various disenfranchisement methods. These included having to wait in line for up to twelve hours to register to vote, paying head taxes, and undergoing new tests, such as requiring black women to read and interpret the Constitution before having the right to vote. In the South, black women faced the most severe obstacles to voting, including bodily harm and fabricated charges designed to place them in jail.
