A strong nation depends on informed citizens who care about the welfare of others.
By Dr. Megan Bailey
Cultural Resource Specialist
United States National Park Service
Civil Rights: Whose Voice Is Heard?
In the United States, people have long fought to have their voices heard. One way of doing this is through voting. Voting is a way for us to express our opinions and choices. It is an opportunity for Americans to choose our leaders and have a say in important issues that affect our communities. The right to vote (also called suffrage or enfranchisement) means that Americans have the right to be heard.
Today, almost all American citizens aged 18 years and older have the right to vote. But throughout history, different groups were not allowed to take part in the voting process. At one point, women, people of color, and immigrants could not vote. People without money, property, or an education have also been prevented from voting. Only wealthy white men could make their voices heard in this particular way.
The original Constitution and Bill of Rights did not protect the right to vote. Instead, each state had its own laws about who could vote. We needed to establish who was an American citizen to have a uniform standard for voting eligibility. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship to everyone born or naturalized in the United States. Citizenship gives people privileges, immunities, equal protection, and due process of law. The Fifteenth Amendment of 1870 said that the government cannot keep a citizen from voting based on his “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”. The purpose of this amendment was to enfranchise African American men. This left half of the American population unable to vote. It was not until 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment forbid the denial of voting rights on the basis of sex, that women had the right to vote.
What does it mean to be a citizen?
Being a citizen comes with important rights, privileges, and responsibilities. A strong democracy depends on informed citizens who care about the welfare of others, their communities, and the world. The act of voting is one way that citizens can carry out their duties and create the society they want to live in.
The Fifteenth Amendment
“Do you believe the Declaration of Independence … that men are created with equal rights…?”
Harper’s Weekly editor George William Curtis posed this question in 1865. Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation two years earlier, and the United States was in the process of ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery. The amendment ensured the freedom of enslaved African Americans, though they still lacked many rights and protections.
One of those rights was the right to vote, also known as suffrage or enfranchisement. African Americans had been fighting for the right to participate in the political process since before the Civil War. They argued that they deserved the same rights as white citizens. Furthermore, over 200,000 Black men had fought in the Civil War. They believed that they should be rewarded for their service with full citizenship. The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, stated that everyone born or naturalized in the U.S. was a citizen. African Americans were now citizens, but they still could not vote.
In 1869, Republicans in Congress proposed another amendment to address suffrage. The Fifteenth Amendment would guarantee protection against racial discrimination in voting. Many women’s rights activists objected to the proposed amendment because the protections would only apply to men. Still, enough states approved the Fifteenth Amendment that it was adopted in 1870.
Black men began voting in local, state, and national elections, and ran for political office. Their votes and leadership helped create access to jobs, housing, and education for African Americans. However, in the 1890s many Southern states passed laws that made it more difficult for African Americans to vote. The Fifteenth Amendment had a significant loophole: it did not grant suffrage to all men, but only prohibited discrimination on the basis of race and former slave status. States could require voters to pass literacy tests or pay poll taxes — difficult tasks for the formerly enslaved, who had little education or money. Because of these discriminatory laws, only a small number of African Americans voted over the next 70 years. During the twentieth century, African Americans fought for civil rights through organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Urban League and through the efforts of individuals like Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. The Voting Rights Act, adopted in 1965, offered greater protections for suffrage.
Though the Fifteenth Amendment had significant limitations, it was an important step in the struggle for voting rights for African Americans and it laid the groundwork for future civil rights activism.
The Nineteenth Amendment
During the United States’ early history, women were denied many of the rights enjoyed by men and faced discrimination because of their sex. Women were excluded from many jobs and educational opportunities. But because they did not have the right to vote (also known as suffrage), women were limited in terms of how much influence they could have over laws and policies. In addition, before the Civil War, many women participated in reform activities, such as the abolitionist movement and temperance leagues. They wanted to pass reform legislation to address the problems they saw in American society, but politicians would not usually listen to those who were disenfranchised (did not have the right to vote). Women’s frustration with their low status in society motivated them to create a movement that eventually resulted in the Nineteenth Amendment. This amendment says “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” That is, it prohibits discrimination in voting based on sex.
Women first organized at the national level in July of 1848, when suffragists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott convened a meeting of over 300 people in Seneca Falls, New York. The attendees included early suffragists Martha C. Wright, Jane Hunt, and Mary M’Clintock, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. These delegates discussed the need for better education and employment opportunities for women, and the need for suffrage. While there, Stanton wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, which is considered to be the founding document of the women’s rights movement.
The suffrage movement grew larger in the years following the Civil War. Women all across the United States participated in the effort to gain the right to vote, though they did not always agree on which strategy was best. Suffrage organizations formed to carry out a variety of tactics. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her longtime collaborator, Susan B. Anthony, founded the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), which focused on changing federal law and opposed the Fifteenth Amendment, which protected Black men’s right to vote but excluded women. Several people, including Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe, disagreed with Stanton and Anthony’s position on the Fifteenth Amendment, and formed a new organization: the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). AWSA supported the Fifteenth Amendment and its members were both Black and white.
The leaders of the movement tended to be educated, middle-class white women with money. They set the national agenda, which didn’t always reflect the experiences of all women. Working women and/or women of color experienced discrimination and prejudice not only because they were women, but also based on their class and race. Many Black women joined suffrage organizations that addressed their specific experiences. Leading reformers including Harriet Tubman, Frances E.W. Harper,Ida B. Wells, and Mary Church Terrell formed the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC) in 1896. The NACWC campaigned in favor of women’s suffrage and improved education, and fought against Jim Crow laws.
In 1890, Anthony helped reunite the NWSA and AWSA to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). One member, Alice Paul, thought that the organization was too moderate, so she founded the National Women’s Party (NWP). The NWP had a variety of strategies to bring attention to the suffrage movement. Its members picketed the White House and held demonstrations in nearby Lafayette Park and at the U.S. Capitol and Senate office buildings. They participated in lobbying, nonviolent protests, hunger strikes, civil disobedience, and silent vigils. Street speaking, pageants, and parades were some of their more eye-catching actions. Alice Paul organized the largest suffrage pageant, which took place in Washington, D.C. on March 3, 1913. About eight thousand women marched from the Capitol to the White House, carrying banners and escorting floats. The 500,000 spectators watched the march, some in support. Others harassed and attacked suffragists in the parade; over 100 women were hospitalized with injuries that day. The parade was important, not only because of its size, but also because the participants challenged traditional ideas of how women should behave in public. They were loud, bold, and theatrical. Those who opposed women’s suffrage feared that society would suffer if women played a role besides wife or mother.
Such opposition would eventually be overruled. In 1919, both the House of Representatives and the Senate passed the Nineteenth Amendment. The amendment then went to the states for ratification. Thirty-six states needed to ratify the amendment in order for it to be adopted, and Harry Burn in the Tennessee House of Representatives cast the decisive vote. Burn had planned to vote against the amendment, but changed his mind after his mother urged him to “be a good boy” and vote for ratification. On August 18, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment went into effect.
On November 2 of that year, over eight million women voted in the U.S. election for the first time. Women also ran for political office in greater numbers. Jeanette Rankin was one of the few women to hold an office before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. When she was elected to Congress in 1916, she made a prediction that would soon come to pass: “I may be the first woman member of Congress. But I won’t be the last.”
Between Two Worlds: Black Women and the Fight for Voting Rights
During the 19th and 20th centuries, Black women played an active role in the struggle for universal suffrage. They participated in political meetings and organized political societies. African American women attended political conventions at their local churches where they planned strategies to gain the right to vote. In the late 1800s, more Black women worked for churches, newspapers, secondary schools, and colleges, which gave them a larger platform to promote their ideas.
But in spite of their hard work, many people didn’t listen to them. Black men and white women usually led civil rights organizations and set the agenda. They often excluded Black women from their organizations and activities. For example, the National American Woman Suffrage Association prevented Black women from attending their conventions. Black women often had to march separately from white women in suffrage parades. In addition, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony wrote the History of Woman Suffrage in the 1880s, they featured white suffragists while largely ignoring the contributions of African American suffragists. Though Black women are less well remembered, they played an important role in getting the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments passed.
Black women found themselves pulled in two directions. Black men wanted their support in fighting racial discrimination and prejudice, while white women wanted them to help change the inferior status of women in American society. Both groups ignored the unique challenges that African American women faced. Black reformers like Mary Church Terrell, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Harriet Tubman understood that both their race and their sex affected their rights and opportunities.
Because of their unique position, Black women tended to focus on human rights and universal suffrage, rather than suffrage solely for African Americans or for women. Many Black suffragists weighed in on the debate over the Fifteenth Amendment, which would enfranchise Black men but not Black women. Mary Ann Shadd Cary spoke in support of the Fifteenth Amendment but was also critical of it as it did not give women the right to vote. Sojourner Truth argued that Black women would continue to face discrimination and prejudice unless their voices were uplifted like those of Black men.
African American women also believed that the issue of suffrage was too large and complex for any one group or organization to tackle alone. They hoped that different groups would work together to accomplish their shared goal. Black suffragists like Nannie Helen Burroughs wrote and spoke about the need for Black and white women to cooperate to achieve the right to vote. Black women worked with mainstream suffragists and organizations, like the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
However, the mainstream organizations did not address the challenges faced by Black women because of their race, such as negative stereotypes, harassment, and unequal access to jobs, housing, and education. So in the late 1800s, Black women formed clubs and organizations where they could focus on the issues that affected them.
In Boston, Black reformers like Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and Charlotte Forten Grimke founded the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896. During their meetings at the Charles Street Meeting House, members discussed ways of attaining civil rights and women’s suffrage. The NACW’s motto, “Lifting as we climb,” reflected the organization’s goal to “uplift” the status of Black women. In 1913, Ida B. Wells founded the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago, the nation’s first Black women’s club focused specifically on suffrage.
After the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920, Black women voted in elections and held political offices. However, many states passed laws that discriminated against African Americans and limited their freedoms. Black women continued to fight for their rights. Educator and political advisor Mary McLeod Bethune formed the National Council of Negro Women in 1935 to pursue civil rights. Tens of thousands of African Americans worked over several decades to secure suffrage, which occurred when the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. This Act represents more than a century of work by Black women to make voting easier and more equitable.
Fighting for Suffrage: Comrades in Conflict
Even when people are working toward common goals, they may disagree on the best way to achieve those goals. One case from the struggle for voting rights involved a split between the abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the women’s rights pioneers Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. For years, the three activists were close friends and worked side-by-side to pursue universal suffrage (the right to vote for all adult citizens) and the abolition of slavery.
At first, Douglass, Stanton, and Anthony all supported universal suffrage so that everyone–men and women, Black and white– would have the right to vote. But while they shared many beliefs and goals, there were points of tension too. The Fourteenth Amendment passed in 1868 recognizing that people born into slavery were entitled to the same citizenship status and protections that free people were. However, because the amendment did not grant the universal right to vote, abolitionists and some suffragists withdrew from the universal suffrage campaign to focus on the enfranchisement (obtaining the right to vote) of Black men.
Some of those involved in the suffrage movement also divided over whether to support the Fifteenth Amendment, which would protect the rights of Black men but did not include women. Douglass strongly supported suffrage for women, but believed that the African American community had a more urgent need for enfranchisement. He was afraid that if the change did not occur at this particular moment, it possibly would never happen. Douglass had the support of many white abolitionists such as Lucy Stone and Wendell Phillips.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony disagreed with their friend. They insisted that all men and women must gain the right to vote at the same time. Indeed, they sometimes argued that white women were more qualified to vote than Black men and allied themselves with opponents of Black suffrage.
Each sides felt betrayed by the other. Anthony and Stanton were disappointed that Douglass supported the Fifteenth Amendment after being a longtime proponent of women’s suffrage. They were frustrated that they were being told to wait even longer for the rights that they had spent decades fighting for. Douglass was hurt by the insults they levied against African Americans and their lack of support for African American causes.
Their disagreement became an open conflict at the 1869 meeting of the American Equal Rights Association (AERA), which took place in New York City’s Steinway Hall and Brooklyn Academy of Music. Douglass, Stanton, and Anthony had a heated debate about whether whether the AERA should support the Fifteenth Amendment if it only referenced Black men. They each argued how the lack of suffrage endangered their community. African Americans were persecuted for their race and women were the property of men; both needed the vote in order to improve their lot.
Ultimately, Stanton and Anthony would never agree with Douglass on this issue. After the argument, Anthony, Stanton, and their supporters left the meeting and founded a new organization, the National Woman Suffrage Association. The NWSA would not focus on any issues besides women’s right to vote.
This conflict caused a painful rift in the three activists’ friendship. Each one felt that the other could not see why their community needed the vote more. In addition, Douglass, Stanton, and Anthony thought that trying to attain the vote for both African Americans and women at the same time would be impossible.They could not envision a way that everyone’s voice could be heard. Meanwhile, many Black women continued to campaign for universal suffrage, knowing that discrimination based on race and sex were equally unacceptable.
Years later, Douglass, Stanton, and Anthony reconciled and had a cordial relationship. In spite of their differences, they had a lot in common. They shared many of the same goals, principles, and experiences. Neither women nor African Americans had been recognized as complete citizens. The root of their conflict was a question without an answer: whose humanity should be recognized first?
Voting Rights: Celebrations of Success
The ratifications of the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments, fifty years apart, were exciting times for many people. On March 30, 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant officially confirmed the 15th Amendment as part of the Constitution. An article ran in the National Republican on the following day, calling the amendment “…the crowning act in the total and entire emancipation of the colored race.” The article went on to declare that, “the message of yesterday is an outburst of a noble, manly nature rejoicing that the status of the colored man is permanently and satisfactorily fixed…” While this statement exaggerates the impact of the amendment, it conveys people’s feelings of excitement and hope for a more just and democratic society.
Throughout the long struggle for voting rights, people devoted time, energy, and resources to making society better for everyone. The ratification of the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments marked historic moments in time. While the amendments had significant limitations and did not result in universal suffrage (the right to vote), they still made a difference. For the first time, the law of the land recognized that discrimination based on race and sex is illegal. The amendments represented the culmination of decades of hard work, sacrifice, and dedication on the part of men and women across the United States. In the aftermath of the amendments’ ratification, people celebrated the outcome of their efforts. Those who benefited from the amendments celebrated their ability to participate in the political process and affirm their status as citizens of the United States.
These celebrations were often large and public. To celebrate the Fifteenth Amendment, African Americans gathered at places in their local communities such as the Thaddeus Stevens School in Washington, D.C. and the Washington Monument in Baltimore. On May 19, 1870, more than 10,000 Black individuals paraded through Baltimore while over 20,000 spectators looked on. Twenty carriages carried honored guests while many groups marched alongside them, including policemen, firemen, schoolchildren, and military bands. When the parade reached Monument Square in downtown Baltimore, the participants heard readings and speeches by abolitionists Charles Sumner, William Lloyd Garrison, and Frederick Douglass.
Artists created large prints to commemorate the Fifteenth Amendment. Several of these illustrations showed celebrations, including the parade in Baltimore. The posters also featured abolitionists, politicians, activists, and other leaders, such as John Brown, Ulysses S. Grant, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln. Many of these prints had various scenes of African Americans engaged in everyday activities, such as farming, attending church, voting, and attending school. Artists used these works to tell the story of how African American men came to have the right to vote, and how the Fifteenth Amendment would help them participate more fully in American society.
Women also celebrated the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 with ceremonies and parades. At Independence Square in Philadelphia, suffragists celebrated their victory by ringing the Justice Bell, a replica of the Liberty Bell. The bell rang 48 times, to represent each state in the union. The Justice Bell is now located in the Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge National Historical Park.
The suffragist Alice Paul made an enormous flag to commemorate the Nineteenth Amendment. Every time a state ratified the amendment, she sewed a ratification star onto the flag. Thirty-six votes were needed to pass the amendment. When the 36th state (Tennessee) ratified the amendment, Paul put the last star on the flag and hung it outside the National Women’s Party headquarters.
Elections were another opportunity to celebrate the right to participate in the political process. Women and Black men voted in local, state, and national elections as soon as they could.
They also ran for and held political office in order to make further changes to create the kind of society they wanted to live in. More than 1,400 African American men held offices during Reconstruction. At the local level, African Americans served as policemen, sheriffs, judges, and mayors. They held positions as state representatives, state treasurers, and secretaries of state. Sixteen African American men were elected to Congress during Reconstruction. Remarkably, nine of them had been born into slavery, and were now serving in federal offices.
Women had held political offices before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, but did so in greater numbers and held higher-status positions after 1920. The 65th Congress (1917-1919) had only one female member, but by 1929, there were nine female members. The decade following the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment saw many firsts for women: in 1923, Soledad Chacon became the Secretary of State in New Mexico, the first Latina and first woman of color to hold a statewide elected executive office; in 1924, Cora Belle Reynolds Anderson of Michigan became the first Native American woman in a state legislature; and in 1925, Wyoming saw Nellie Tayloe Ross become the nation’s first woman governor.
Voting Rights: What’s Next?
A century ago, people who demanded universal suffrage were considered idealistic, strange, or even dangerous. Now we take these ideas for granted as essential to American democracy. The dreams of previous generations have become the common sense of today.
Transforming ideas to policies is a slow process full of complex challenges. Progress is rarely steady; rather, it comes about in fits and starts.The Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments were major milestones but they did not end the struggle for voting rights. Subsequent legislation was needed to reinforce or provide additional protections for American citizens.
One of the most important is the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which addresses the disenfranchisement of African Americans. Beginning in 1890, Southern states adopted laws that made it extremely difficult for African-Americans to vote. These laws required people to pay voting taxes, demonstrate literacy, prove their good character, or perform other challenging tasks, before they were allowed to vote.
Individuals and groups such as the Ku Klux Klan intimidated Black men who had voted or tried to vote with beatings, lynchings, and setting fire to their homes, churches and schools. Because of these laws and threats, African-American voting declined in the South, in spite of the Fifteenth Amendment. For example, 67 percent of Black adult men in Mississippi were registered to vote in 1867, but only 4 percent were registered in 1892. As Black men lost the right to vote, they lost the ability to participate in elections and hold political office. The Civil Rights movement fought these Jim Crow laws and, with the support of President Lyndon B. Johnson, resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Throughout the twentieth century, more Americans called for similar protections for their right to vote. For example, Native Americans gained the right to vote when the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 declared that all Indians born in the U.S. and its territories are U.S. citizens. The Twenty-Third Amendment, ratified in 1961, gave American residents of the District of Columbia the right to vote. In 1971, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.
These changes to voting rights occurred over the course of a century. It takes dedication and persistence to achieve major national milestones like Constitutional amendments. Change happens because of the choices that ordinary people make about how they will use their time, resources, and talents.
Americans believe that the values of democracy, freedom, and equality are worth defending. These values were written into the United States’ founding documents, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the preamble of which reads:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Each generation of Americans faces a different environment and a unique set of economic, political, and social conditions. When we know this history, we can better understand how far we have come, how we got here, and what our future may hold.
Originally published by the United States National Park Service, 10.09.2020, to the public domain.