On the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, feminist writer, author and activist Gloria Steinem said that Black, indigenous and other American women of color were essential to the suffrage movement even though their efforts have not historically always been recognized.
"It was huge," Steinem said of American women's struggle to win the right to vote in the U.S. "And it included people we don't hear about enough. I mean, it included Black suffragists. It included Native American suffragists."
READ: A century ago, some American women won the right to vote. Here's what women say today
Although women of color were essential to the suffrage movement, they were not always fully welcomed or recognized by some of its most visible leaders, according to historical accounts of events leading up to the passage of the 19th Amendment. And while the amendment itself guaranteed the right to vote to many women, it took several more decades for that right to be fully protected by the constitution for Black women, Native American women, Latina women and others.
Steinem pointed to the Seneca Falls convention in 1848, which is considered the beginning of the U.S. women's suffrage movement, as evidence that women of color have not always been included in the narrative. By the time Seneca Falls occurred, Black women had already been active in the American political space. In a recent interview, Stanford University historian Estelle Freedman noted that Black and white northern women both participated in the anti-slavery movement from the 1830s through the 1850s, which eventually gave way to the suffrage movement.
"[Women of color] were always more active … yet Seneca Falls, in which there was only one person of color and it was a man — Frederick Douglass — is counted as the beginning of the movement," Steinem said.
Steinem noted that today, "history is repeating itself in the sense that Black women are the single most important and influential group in the Democratic Party, just as women of color were more influential in getting the [right to] vote."
The 19th Amendment did not signal the end of racial oppression in America, nor did it signal an end to the gender pay gap, workplace harassment or gender-based violence. Steinem said the women's rights movement has "a long way to go" before full equality between men and women is achieved in American society. "We still don't fully have the right to our own bodies," said Steinem, referencing the ongoing legislative fights over abortion in the U.S. "I think we have yet to understand the rights that the female half of the human race need as females."
Steinem said she hoped the coronavirus pandemic would result in a "changed consciousness," given the virus does not discriminate based on race, class, nationality or gender, and this gave her a sort of cautious optimism amid the tragic public health crisis: "I try to be realistic, but hope is a form of planning. So that should not be taken away from us."