Women Got The Right To Vote 100 Years Ago Today — But Only White Women
“Banner State Woman’s National Baptist Convention,” 1905
It’s the 100-year anniversary of women getting the right to vote, a.k.a. the 19th Amendment. But that right only applied to white women. So what about Black women, Latina women, Indigenous women and Asian American women? When did they get the right to vote?
All the 19th Amendement said was “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.” That still left all manner of poll taxes and other voter suppression tactics at states’ disposal to keep women of color from voting. Let’s take a look at when American women of color — every color — got the right to vote.
WHEN DID BLACK WOMEN GET THE RIGHT TO VOTE?
Black women could vote in a few northern states after the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920, but other states across the country still disenfranchised Black women with poll taxes, literacy tests, and the “grandfather clause” (you couldn’t vote unless your grandfather had voted, which was not possible if you grandfather was a slave.
Black women could not vote in all 50 states until the passage of the Voting Rights Acts of 1965.
WHEN DID LATINX WOMEN GET THE RIGHT TO VOTE?
But the Voting Rights Acts of 1965 did not do the job for Latinx women. It wan’t until a decade later that the 1975 extension of the Voting Rights Act allowed full voting rights for many in the Latinx community, and the printing of ballots in Spanish.
WHEN DID ASIAN AMERICAN WOMEN GET THE RIGHT TO VOTE?
People with Asian ancestry could not vote until 1952, when the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 allowed Asian Americans to become citizens and vote.
WHEN DID INDIGENOUS WOMEN GET THE RIGHT TO VOTE?
Indigenous people technically got the right vote under the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, but voter suppression was widespread until the Voting Rights Acts of 1965.
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