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Understanding the truth behind the Seneca Falls Convention is very important to learn about the injustice experienced by minority women. I find it interesting because this is often overshadowed by more well-known activists and not widely taught, leaving out the critical perspectives, contributions, and struggles of women of color in the fight for Woman's Rights.

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The Emergence of the White-Dominated Women's Suffrage Movement- Late 19th Century

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The Emergence of the White-Dominated Women's Suffrage Movement- Late 19th Century

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Late 19th Century: The suffrage movement in the U.S. gains momentum, with white American women pushing for the right to vote.

While the Seneca Falls Convention advocated for women's suffrage, it predominantly represented the interests and perspectives of white middle-class women. These women, like Stanton and Anthony, focused primarily on gender inequality, often disregarding the intersectional realities of race, class, and the unique struggles faced by Black women.

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When voting rights didn't protect all women

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The Declaration of Sentiments, drafted during the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, listed 18 grievances that women faced and called for societal reforms to address these injustices. Later, the 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, secured women’s right to vote, but Black women still faced significant barriers to exercising that right

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What do we think the Seneca Falls Convention represented?

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What do we think the Seneca Falls Convention represented?

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Unlike the popular narrative of the Seneca Falls Convention as a celebratory event where women fought for the right to vote, there are hidden truths, including the unrecognized contributions of minority female advocates.

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Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony | Seneca Falls Convention: The First Convention on Women’s Rights

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The first women’s rights convention centered around the Declaration of Sentiments.

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The Known Leaders of the Woman's Rights Movement: While Their Names Are Remembered, Many Minority Voices Are Forgotten

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The Known Leaders of the Woman's Rights Movement: While Their Names Are Remembered, Many Minority Voices Are Forgotten

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Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony | A Great Partnership

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Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton made for a formidable partnership.

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The well-known first convention for women’s rights was largely led by white, upper-class women fighting for their own rights, while also perpetuating racism in suffrage decisions that excluded minority groups.

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How History Classes on the Women’s Suffrage Movement Leave Out the Work of Black Voting Rights Activists

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Many of the Black voting rights activists who paved the way for Kamala Harris are not household names or even taught in U.S. schools

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The Exclusion of Black Women in Voting Rights Activism

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The Exclusion of Black Women in Voting Rights Activism

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Differing from the well-known leaders of the women’s rights movement, like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, activists such as Ida B. Wells challenged the white-dominated movement and fought for the rights of Black women within the suffrage movement.

This is relevant to our current moment because, contrary to the celebratory narrative surrounding the Seneca Falls Convention and the idea of women's emancipation presented by the media at the time, the reality was far more complex. Students often learn about this event without understanding the exclusion faced by many women whose rights were overlooked, as well as the activists whose contributions remain unrecognized to this day.

A key controversy lies in the fact that the rights granted during the Convention were not extended to all women, particularly when intersecting identities were involved. For example, being both a woman and African American. The language of the 19th Amendment, which did not explicitly grant women the right to vote, further highlights that suffrage rights for Black women were denied for much longer.

So, true emancipation for women did not occur when we are often led to believe. Many women, especially women of color, were excluded from these progressive actions, and their struggles remain largely overlooked.

Another controversy involves the stance of white-privileged, prominent activists, who were opposed to extending suffrage rights to Black individuals. For instance, Susan B. Anthony actively campaigned against Black men’s right to vote. Yet, these activists are still portrayed in history lessons as the leaders of the women’s suffrage movement and the mothers of feminism. When, in reality, their movement was largely shaped by the activism of predominantly white voters.

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Lucy Stone was a leader advocate for women's suffrage and the abolition of slavery. Unlike many prominent figures from the Seneca Falls Convention, Stone advocated for the rights of Black individuals, including Black women. She organized the first national women’s rights convention in 1850 and helped form the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Despite her significant contributions, Stone’s efforts remain overshadowed by those of more widely recognized suffragists.

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Ida B. Wells was a pioneering activist who fought for women's suffrage and educated African American voters. She founded suffrage clubs to prepare minorities for voting, advocating for both racial and gender equality in the suffrage movement.

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Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a prominent journalist, activist, and researcher, in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. In her lifetime, she battled sexism, racism, and violence. As a skilled writer, Wells-Barnett also used her skills as a journalist to shed light on the conditions of African Americans throughout the South.

Ida Bell Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16 th, 1862. She was born into slavery during the Civil War. Once the war ended Wells-Barnett's parents became politically active in Reconstruction Era politics. Her parents instilled into her the importance of education. Wells-Barnett enrolled at Rust College but was expelled when she started a dispute with the university president. In 1878, Wells-Barnett went to visit her grandmother. While she was there Wells-Barnett was informed that a yellow fever epidemic had hit her hometown. The disease took both of Wells-Barnett's parents and her infant brother. Left to raise her brothers and sister, she took a job as a teacher so that she could keep the family together. Eventually, Wells-Barnett moved her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee. There she continued to work as an educator.

In 1884, Wells-Barnett filed a lawsuit against a train car company in Memphis for unfair treatment. She had been thrown off a first-class train, despite having a ticket. Although she won the case on the local level, the ruling was eventually overturned in federal court. After the lynching of one of her friends, Wells-Barnett turned her attention to white mob violence. She became skeptical about the reasons black men were lynched and set out to investigate several cases. She published her findings in a pamphlet and wrote several columns in local newspapers. Her expose about an 1892 lynching enraged locals, who burned her press and drove her from Memphis. After a few months, the threats became so bad she was forced to move to Chicago, Illinois.

In 1893, Wells-Barnett, joined other African American leaders in calling for the boycott of the World's Columbian Exposition. The boycotters accused the exposition committee of locking out African Americans and negatively portraying the black community. In 1895, Wells-Barnett married famed African American lawyer Ferdinand Barnett. Together, the couple had four children. Throughout her career Wells-Barnett, balanced motherhood with her activism.

Wells-Barnett traveled internationally, shedding light on lynching to foreign audiences. Abroad, she openly confronted white women in the suffrage movement who ignored lynching. Because of her stance, she was often ridiculed and ostracized by women's suffrage organizations in the United States. Nevertheless, Wells-Barnett remained active the women's rights movement. She was a founder of the National Association of Colored Women's Club which was created to address issues dealing with civil rights and women's suffrage. Although she was in Niagara Falls for the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), her name is not mentioned as an official founder. Late in her career Wells-Barnett focused on urban reform in the growing city of Chicago. She died on March 25 th, 1931.

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Pioneering journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett battled sexism, racism, and violence, particularly working to shed light on the conditions of African Americans throughout the South. Read her story on womenshistory.org.

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As the United States entered World War I in 1917, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) encouraged its supporters to join in the war effort. The organization argued women deserved the vote because they were patriots, caregivers, and mothers. Women's expertise in maintaining the home and family would improve politics and society.

The combination of NAWSA's war efforts and the publicity attracted by National Woman's Party's (NWP) pickets of the White House led to widespread support for woman suffrage. Although President Woodrow Wilson previously had refused to endorse suffrage, in September 1918 he addressed the Senate in favor of votes for women. He appealed to patriotic arguments for suffrage when he asked representatives, "We have made partners of the women in this war; shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?"

The Nineteenth Amendment states: "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." Congress passed the amendment in June 1919. The NAWSA and NWP suffragists lobbied local and state representatives to ensure its subsequent ratification by the states.

After the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment on August 18, 1920, female activists continued to use politics to reform society. NAWSA became the League of Women Voters. In 1923, the NWP proposed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to ban discrimination based on sex. The League of Women Voters and efforts to pass the ERA continue today.

By Allison Lange, Ph.D.
Fall 2015

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19th Amendment - History of U.S. Woman's Suffrage

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The Nineteenth Amendment was ratification on August 18, 1920 and women were granted the right to vote.

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Although the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote in 1920, it did not ensure equal voting rights for Black women. It was not until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that racial discrimination in voting was prohibited, securing the vote for Black men and women.

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View the entire Explainers collection

What is the Voting Rights Act of 1965?

Regarded as the legislative crown jewel of the civil rights era, the Voting Rights Act was enacted as a comprehensive tool meant to undo the political hold of Jim Crow policies in the South and related discriminatory structures nationwide. Congress adopted the law to ensure that states followed the 15th Amendment's guarantee that the right to vote not be denied because of race. The law fundamentally opened political opportunities for Black and brown communities to participate in all aspects of the political system on an equal basis.

Section 5 of the law requires jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to obtain approval from the Department of Justice or a court before changing voting rules, a process known as "preclearance." Section 2 of the law allows people to sue - either on their own behalf or with the assistance of the Justice Department - to undo existing laws and procedures that would deny equal political opportunity to voters to elect their candidates of choice. However, these protections have been eroded by recent Supreme Court decisions.

Why was the Voting Rights Act enacted?

A nonviolent campaign in March 1965 by voting rights marchers in Alabama culminated in a televised, brutal attack by state police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The outrage over this incident prompted immediate national action in Congress, spurred by President Lyndon Johnson.

The law was a more fulsome response than prior, inadequate efforts to assure that states registered citizens and allowed them to vote regardless of race. Despite multiple court orders, including from the Supreme Court, several states created rules that denied or limited opportunities to vote for Black citizens, such as poll taxes and literacy tests. These schemes effectively undermined or eliminated the political power of Black communities, even where they were a majority of the population.

What are the effects of the Voting Rights Act?

The law has been a hugely successful shield against schemes that limit or dilute the voting power of communities with a history of being marginalized. This protection has been especially helpful in processes like redistricting, which has led to the election of hundreds of federal, state, and local candidates of color in states with a history of discrimination.

In the years after the Voting Rights Act's passage, the disparity in registration rates between white and black voters rates dropped from nearly 30 percentage points in the early 1960s to 8 percentage points just a decade later. Based on this success, the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized multiple times. In 2006, the reauthorization passed both chambers of Congress with wide bipartisan support, passing unanimously in the Senate.

How has the Supreme Court changed the Voting Rights Act?

The Voting Rights Act has been a constant target of conservatives on the Supreme Court since its enactment. While the law has been renewed multiple times, the Court's decisions in recent years have often worked to limit its application. Of greatest concern is the 2013 case Shelby County v. Holder, which effectively eliminated the use of preclearance. Following the decision, states that no longer had to get federal approval of new voting rules unleashed a wave of policies that made it harder to vote. And Brennan Center research has shown that the racial gap in voter turnout has grown in jurisdictions previously covered by Section 5.

In the absence of preclearance requirements, civil rights groups have needed to rely more on litigation under Section 2 to combat discrimination in the political system, but lawsuits to undo these unfair rules are both costly and take years - during which elections continue. And in its 2021 ruling in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the Supreme Court made it harder to bring lawsuits under Section 2.

What are the prospects for the Voting Rights Act's future?

Despite declining yet another invitation to depart from precedent to erode the law further in the recent case of Allen v. Milligan, the Supreme Court's current majority has been quite clear in its hostility for the present means of combatting discrimination in politics and protecting fair representation. However, the Court is not the final say on the matter. Congress has specific authority under the 15th Amendment to craft necessary legislation to safeguard the right to vote absent race discrimination. Accordingly, a new law that adequately protects the right to vote for every citizen is well in order. The record supporting such a law would press the Supreme Court to respect a new and well-grounded congressional response to a present and clear need for federal oversight of our election system.

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The landmark 1965 law is one of the most successful civil rights measures in history, but the Supreme Court has eviscerated it.

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Tensions arose when white suffragists prioritized women's suffrage over Black men's rights after the 15th Amendment was passed in 1870. This created a racial divide within the movement, with Black women facing both racism and sexism in their struggle for justice.

Although the 15th Amendment granted African American men the right to vote by prohibiting voting discrimination based on race, Black women were still denied the vote. During this period, many activists fought not only for women's rights but also for the end of racial discrimination.

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The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a landmark law that aimed to eliminate racial discrimination in voting, especially in the South, where practices like literacy tests, poll taxes, and other discriminatory measures had long prevented Black Americans, including Black women, from voting.

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Voting Rights Act of 1965 - One Minute History

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White Feminism refers to how privileged feminists within the movement have historically benefited more from progressive actions over time. Much like how the leaders of the Seneca Falls Convention back in 1848 secured rights for white women before minority women, white feminism today continues to prioritize the needs of white women while often excluding or marginalizing women of color.

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Why We Need To Talk About White Feminism

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Critiques of White-Feminism by Bell Hooks

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Critiques of White-Feminism by Bell Hooks

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In "Ain't I a Woman?" (1981), Bell Hooks critiques white feminism for focusing on the struggles of white, middle- and upper-class women, while marginalizing women of color. This connects to the Seneca Falls Convention, where Black women activists like Ida B. Wells were excluded despite fighting for both racial and gender equality. In the 20th century, feminists began to question this exclusion, with voices like Hooks calling for a more inclusive and intersectional approach to feminism that acknowledges the unique struggles of women of color.