Celebrating Black History Month and 100 Years of Women’s Right to Vote

NewMexicoWomen.Org celebrates Black History Month (BHM) 2020 with an eye toward this year’s BHM theme of the African American vote. Concurrently, we honor the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote in our country. We know that women’s suffrage often excluded and invisibilized women of color and, particularly, Black women, even as they contributed significantly to suffragist and abolitionist efforts. Here we feature several stories that have been left out of our school books and mainstream media. By centering these powerful stories from the past, we move toward a future of gender justice that includes the narratives and contributions of all self-identified women.

Mary Ann Shadd Cary from Delaware, helped facilitate the Underground Railroad, and through her anti-slavery publication, The Provincial Freeman, was the first Black female newspaper editor in North America. She was also the first African American woman to obtain a law degree and cast a vote in a national election.

                                                Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, from Baltimore, was one of the first African American women writers to be published in the United States. Frances was a social reformist whose poetry and essays contributed significantly to the abolitionist and suffragist movements. Read her poem, “Bury Me In Free Land” here.

                                              Charlotte Forten Grimke

From Philadelphia, Charlotte Forten Grimke, was a published author, a teacher, and a nurse. She co-founded the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896 as a space where Black women reformists could organize around and respond to the exclusion of African American women’s concerns in white suffragist movements. You can read Charlotte’s poetry here.

In addition to educating ourselves about intersectional feminist histories that center the voices and experiences of African Americans, below are two additional ways to celebrate Black History throughout the year:

• Read publications from this Black History Reading List produced by the Albuquerque Public Library System.
• Watch this video of Patricia Hill Collins, presenting We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest: Lessons from Black Feminism.” Patricia was the first African American President of the American Sociological Association, has authored several books and is a Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park.