Who Was Left Out? Race and the Suffrage Movement

The women's suffrage movement fought exclusion, but it also practised it. When the Fifteenth Amendment protected Black men's votes but not women's, some white suffragists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, used racist arguments against it, while others such as Lucy Stone supported it as progress. Later, many white-led organizations pursued Southern support by sidelining Black women. At the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, the journalist and anti-lynching campaigner Ida B.

Wells was asked to march at the back with other Black women; she instead joined the Illinois delegation mid-route. Black women organized their own clubs and suffrage groups, such as the Alpha Suffrage Club founded by Wells in Chicago in 1913. Native American women, many not recognized as citizens until 1924, and Asian immigrant women barred from naturalization were also excluded. Recognizing these exclusions does not erase the movement's achievements; it shows how struggles for rights can reproduce the inequalities of their time.