As the U.S. marks the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, many event organizers have been careful to present it as a commemoration, not a celebration. That's because when the 19th Amendment passed in 1920, it was mostly white women who benefited.
Visitors to the Arizona Capitol Museum look at a display honoring the state’s early suffrage movement in this Wednesday, March 11, 2020, in Phoenix. The display includes a mannequin dressed in period consume depicting Frances Willard Munds, who led a successful 1912 ballot initiative that gave women the right to vote.
The 100th anniversary has arrived during a year of nationwide protests against racial inequality that have forced the United States to once again reckon with its uncomfortable history. The complicated nature of the suffrage movement came full circle last week when Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden chose California U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate, making her the first Black woman on a major party ticket.In an appearance with Biden last week, Harris said she was “mindful of all the heroic and ambitious women before me whose sacrifice, determination and resilience makes my presence here today even possible.
The 100th anniversary marks an opportunity to “honestly examine” the relationship between white and Black women in the women’s rights movement, said Johnetta Betch Cole, a former college president and anthropologist who is currently the national chair of the National Conference of Negro Women, an organization that was founded in 1935 to advocate for women’s rights.
In June, protesters in Iowa demanded that Iowa State University remove the name of suffragist and alumna Carrie Chapman Catt from a building because of white supremacist and anti-immigrant statements attributed to her. Kelley said the protesters “need to understand history” and that Catt and other suffragists had to engage in the white-supremacist politics of the time.
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