African-American women's suffrage movement

[1] These interracial groups were radical expressions of women's political ideals, and they led directly to voting rights activism before and after the Civil War.

Upper-class white women in particular first articulated their own oppression in marriage and the private sphere using the metaphor of slavery, and they first developed a political consciousness by mobilizing in support of abolitionism.

[7] Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Maria Weston Chapman were among the early female abolitionists.

Abolitionists who headed the Equal Rights Association like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had a primarily white agenda.

[8] After the Civil War it became clear that black and white women had different views of why the right to vote was essential.

Many politically engaged African-American women were primarily invested in matters of racial equality, with suffrage later materializing as a secondary goal.

[13] Southern whites feared African Americans gaining more political advantage and thus power; African-American women voters would help to achieve this change.

During the two years that she spent in prison, Davis read, wrote essays on injustices, and prepared as co-counsel for her own defense.

[citation needed] The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were eventually passed by Congress and women were still not granted the right to vote.

[16] The reasons for this change in ideals varies, but in the 1890s younger women began to take the leadership roles and people such as Stanton and Anthony were no longer in charge.

Under their president, Helen Appo Cook, the CWL fought for black suffrage and held night classes.

In 1896, both groups combined to form the National Association of Colored Women under the leadership of Mary Church Terrell.

[19] The group worked in publishing the Alpha Suffrage Record newspaper to canvas neighborhoods and voice political opinions.

[19] One of the many black women focused on advancing literary "artistic and intellectual development" among African Americans in the north was Bettiola Heloise Fortson.

[21] After the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, African-American women, particularly those inhabiting Southern states, still faced a number of barriers.

[23] One such woman was Annie Simms Banks who was chosen to serve as a delegate to Kentucky's Republican Party convention in March 1920.

These obstacles included bodily harm and fabricated charges designed to land them in jail if they attempted to vote.