Breaking Barriers And Getting The Vote

Published: Aug. 25, 2020, 1:59 p.m.

One hundred years ago, women got the vote in the U.S. Constitution. That didn’t mean all women actually got to vote. In her new book, historian Martha Jones describes how African-American women strategized, organized, preached and marched--sometimes alongside white suffragists and sometimes alone. They tackled racism at the same time they fought sexism. Jones calls her new book Vanguard, because, “Black women are the organizers, they are the foot soldiers, they are the architects, they are the spokespeople for the necessity of African American voting rights." Jones traces how Black women built political skills in churches and women’s clubs … and kept struggling for laws that would keep the promise of the Nineteen Amendment. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.