June 4, 1919: U.S. Congress passed the 19th Amendment, which became law 15 months later and gave some women the right to vote. However, many women of color remained disenfranchised due to Jim Crow, policies towards Native Americans, and immigration laws. As historian Cathleen D. Cahill explains, “The Nineteenth Amendment enfranchised white women nationwide as well as northern and western black women and some Hispanas. But many Native women remained legal wards of the government; black women and many Mexican Americans faced disenfranchisement under Jim Crow; and immigration laws deliberately excluded Chinese women.” For these women, continued exclusion from American democracy despite public rejoicing about the 19th Amendment was a painful reminder of their devaluation by the American government. It is important to resist narratives that frame this amendment as any sort of end point. It was a great victory, but difficult work remained for historically marginalized people in the United States.
Citations: Cathleen D. Cahill, Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020), 5-6, 205; “Sign, ‘A Woman Living Here Has Registered to Vote,’ 1919,” National Museum of American History (Washington, D.C.), Smithsonian Open Access, https://www.si.edu/object/sign-woman-living-here-has-registered-vote-1919:nmah_1414548.
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