“W hen the ballot is put
into the hands of the
American woman the
world is going to get a
correct estimate of the
Negro woman,” wrote
Nannie Helen Burroughs
(left, holding banner).
Many organizations run
by African-American
women campaigned
for the vote, including
the Woman’s Auxiliary
to the National Baptist
Convention, which Bur-
roughs helped found.
LOCTHE PAST IS STILL WITH US.
MY GRANDMOTHERS WERE BORN
INTO A WORLD IN WHICHTHEY COULDN’T VOTE.
fussy Elizabeth Cady Stanton, stiffly posing in
a black-and-white portrait or as long-skirted
women brandishing quaint banners, demon-
strating for something we take for granted. After
all, more women now vote than men, nearly 10
million more in the 2016 presidential election.
Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of
Representatives, is one of the most powerful
people in the country. Hillary Clinton won the
popular vote for president in 2016, and six women
competed to be the Democratic nominee in 2020.
BUT THE PAST is still with us. My grandmothers
were born into a world in which they couldn’t
vote. A girl born in the United States today
arrives in a country that a woman has never led.
Nearly 51 percent of the population is female, but
far fewer women hold elected office than men.
Efforts to limit who can vote persist. Clinton lost
to a man known for sexist behavior, and none of
those female presidential candidates made it to
the top of the ticket. The campaign for political
equality that began in the 19th century shows
no sign of being over in the 21st.
The push for women’s suffrage began in 1848
in part because Stanton, a socially active woman
from a prosperous and prominent family, was
chafing at her circumscribed life. Stanton had
moved from Boston to the small town of Seneca
Falls, New York, for the health of her husband,
Henry, an abolitionist who began leaving her
alone with their three sons as he traveled the
state agitating against slavery. As much as she
loved her children—she would end up having
seven—Stanton found the limitations on what
women were able to achieve maddening.
“I suffered with mental hunger,” she later
wrote.
When Lucretia Mott, a noted Quaker abo-
litionist, came to the area for a visit, Stanton
welcomed the chance to see her. The two had
met several years earlier at an antislavery con-
vention in London. Over tea with Mott and a
few friends, Stanton “poured out the torrent of
my long-accumulating discontent,” she wrote,
“with such vehemence and indignation that I
stirred myself, as well as the rest of the party,
to do and dare anything.”
What they dared to do was organize their
own convention, the first to be held on women’s
rights in the U.S. They did it quickly, in little
more than 10 days, because Mott, the most
experienced activist of any of them, would be
leaving soon.
The women drafted a “Declaration of Sen-
timents” to be presented to the conventionTHE FIGHT TO BE HEARD 105