Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Professor and Coordinator of Graduate Programs in History at Morgan State University,
is a founder of the Association of Black Women Historians. She has co-edited three books, including Black Women
in America: An Historical Encyclopedia.
Summary
Rosalyn Terborg-Penn draws from original documents to take a comprehensive look at the African American women
who fought for the right to vote. She analyzes the women's own stories, and examines why they joined and how they
participated in the U. S. women's suffrage movement.
Not all African American women suffragists were from elite circles. Terborg-Penn finds representation by working-class
and professional women, from all parts of the nation. Some employed radical, others conservative, means to gain
the right to vote. Black women, however, were unified in working to use the ballot to improve not only their own
status, but the lives of black people in their communities.
Following the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, state governments in the South enacted policies which disfranchised
African American women. Many white suffragists closed their eyes to these discriminatory acts. Terborg-Penn shows
how every political and racial effort to keep African American women disfranchised met with their active resistance
until black women finally achieved full citizenship.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Revisiting the Question of Race in the Woman Suffrage Movement
2. African American Women in the First Generation of Woman Suffragists: 1850-1869
3. African American Woman Suffragists Finding Their Own Voices: 1870s and 1880s
4. Suffrage Strategies and Ideas: African American Women Leaders Respond during "the Nadir"
5. Mobilizing to Win the Vote: African American Women's Organizations
6. Anti-Black Woman Suffrage Tactics and African American Women's Responses
7. African American Women as Voters and Candidates
8. The Nineteenth Amendment and Its Meaning for African American Women
