The purpose of this exhibit is to present the ways in which African-American women have been politically active in American history. In common teachings of American history, African-American women are often put in the peripherals and are presented as agents that have things done upon them; instead of how they have impacted the world. Since African people were brought to the Americas as slaves, Black women have had to assert themselves politically, and have resisted politically. This exhibit will explore questions such as: How have African-American women claimed their agency in American history? What were their resistance methods/tactics and goals? What organizations did they lead to uplift Black communities throughout American history?
For African-Americans, the period of Reconstruction was a time of establishment, independence and movement. It was also a period of economic strife, as sharecropping was the primary area of employment for most freed Black families in the South. Reconstruction would be the first time in American history where African-Americans held public office, including the U.S. Senate; as a big goal for African-Americans was political autonomy and the right to vote. During Radical Reconstruction, between 1867-78, Congress granted African-American men the status of citizenship and the right to vote, through the 14thand 15thamendments. African-American women, facing the “double jeopardy” of both racial and gender oppression, would not be given the right to vote until the next century (Beal 1968, 166).
Black women could not vote during this period, but they were politically active in non-traditional ways. They made themselves present and made efforts for racial uplift in socially stratified places, such as higher education and schools, the U.S. military, and other areas for activism. Problems that concerned African-American women after emancipation included the search for lost relatives, literacy and education, marriage, economic stability and developing community that had otherwise been tampered or absent during the system of slavery (Prestage 1991, 93). It is important to note that Black women’s political activity in this sense is not predicated on their presence in the U.S. government or politics necessarily, but the actions they make as political agents on behalf of themselves and black communities.
Reconstruction and its aftermath bought about mass fear and violence against Black people. As Black people mobilized and Black men were able to be politically active within the U.S. government, strenuous efforts were made to make sure that those votes did not matter or did not hold as much weight as a white vote would. Another way to do so was through lynching, a violent practice that would continue well into the next century for another 60+ years. Ida B. Wells actively fought against lynching through series of campaigning, publications and lectures. In the period between 1890-1900, Ida B. Wells and other prominent Black women spearheaded and founded organizations such as the National Association for Colored Women (NACW) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (Sklar 1995).
The beginning of the 1900 saw major strides toward creating educational networks and schools for African-American women. Scholarship and philosophies from figures such as W.E.B DuBois, Booker T. Washington and Lucy C. Laney contributed to an educational consciousness that was arising in the 1890s. Though they shared different views, the general consensus was that education, for African-Americans, would be the primary way to uplift the race. Education could be a way to relieve poverty, grant one access to a wider variety in employment, and inform oneself of their condition.
The success of the women’s suffrage movement in the 1920’s did not come easy. Though the outcome was the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, it did not necessarily mean that Black women were welcome to vote. However, Black women were active in the women’s rights movement dating back to 1848, during the women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York (Dudden 2011). In 1866, Margaretta Forten and Harriet Forten Purvis established the interracial Philadelphia Suffrage Association. Soon there would be a rift in associations between Black and white women because many white women did not agree with the prioritization of Black male suffrage, and thus did not promote a universal suffrage. Mary Church Terrell and Ida B. Wells were figures in this movement, and made political statements by denouncing anti-Black women’s suffragist leaders such as Alice Paul.
African-American women are generally seen as the breadwinners in the home during World War II. They occupied many political spaces, including the government and political parties, as well as functioning members of the actual war. Though a lot of black women worked in domestic service industries, they also served important roles in the military and navy. An army unit named “Six Triple Eight”, or the 6888 Central Postal Directory Battalion, was the largest group of black women to serve overseas. From 1945-46, women of the battalion cleared a two-year backlog of mail for Americans in Europe between the Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Red Cross (Clark 2019). This group of women, among other roles that African-American women had in World War II, pushes back on the historical narrative that African-American women were confined to domestic work as the only means of economic support for themselves and their families.
This project will explore the ways in which African-American women mobilized themselves politically to further advance the Black communities they were apart of, throughout American history. Starting from the Post-Reconstruction period (1880-1900), displayed will be Black women’s activism against race violence and disenfranchisement. The second part of the exhibit will be focused on the Suffrage Movement between 1900-1920, tracing the intellectual efforts made by Black women for the purpose of gaining higher educational access and resources for Black people. The last part will highlight World War II in the 1940s, and the vital positions Black women held amidst the invasion of Jim Crow law in the U.S. Army.