>> It's been 100 years since women were promised the right to
vote. That milestone came when the 19th Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution was ratified in August of 1920. But that promise
of the right to vote? For many, that promise went unfulfilled for
decades, even after the 19th Amendment.
>> One thing to know right off the bat: The familiar shorthand
that the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote? Scratch
that. Nobody gave women anything.
>> This was a real struggle. It was a fight. It was a long,
bitter, agonizing fight.
>> And nothing was given. It took George Washington six years to
rectify men's grievances by war. But it took seventy-two years to
establish women's rights by law.
>> That fight wasn't just about sex. It was also deeply entwined
with race.
>> The women's suffrage movement of the 1800s had its roots in the
anti-slavery abolitionist movement, which was seeking
universal suffrage. But early suffragist leaders including
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony would later split
off from their alliance with abolitionists. They were outraged
that under the 15th Amendment, Black men would get the vote
while white women were still denied. And racism caused deep
divisions among women in the suffrage movement itself.
Prominent African-American activists like Ida B. Wells and
Mary Church Terrell often found themselves marginalized by white
suffragists, their concerns about racial inequities ignored.
>> The story of African-American women has been ignored for so
long because it requires grappling with the failures of
people who have been considered heroes of an earlier time.
>> The fight to win passage of the 19th Amendment in Congress
further exposed a painful truth.
>> Racism runs through the debates over women's suffrage,
oftentimes through and through. To win over Southern politicians,
>> some white suffragists argued that giving women the vote would
actually solidify white supremacy because it would increase the
white vote in numbers that far outweighed the Black vote.
>> This is something that should assure other white supremacists
that they will be viable in their rule.
>> Carrie Chapman Catt, the president of the National
American Woman Suffrage Association, wrote this to a
Southern congressman in 1918, trying to persuade him to vote
yes on the 19th Amendment:
>> The present condition in the South makes sovereigns of some
Negro men, while all white women are their subjects. These are sad
but solemn truths. If you want white supremacy, why not have it
constitutionally, honourably? The federal amendment offers the way.
>> Eventually, after many years of defeat, Congress passed the
19th Amendment and the focus turned to winning states. Thirty-six of
the 48 states had to ratify the amendment before it could become
part of the Constitution. By August of 1920, the suffragists
had won. They got their "perfect 36th" state when Tennessee voted to
ratify. Women had earned the right to vote across the land.
But -- not so fast.
>> August of 1920 marks for African-American women a start,
not a finish.
>> In October of 1920, soon after the 19th Amendment was ratified
and with a presidential election around the corner, Mary Church
Terrell wrote a letter filled with foreboding about what was to
come.
>> The colored women of the South will be shamefully treated and
will not be allowed to vote, I am sure. We are so helpless without
the right of citizenship in that section of the country where we
need it most.
>> Voting restrictions in the Jim Crow South disenfranchised
African-Americans, women and men alike. Poll taxes, literacy
tests, grandfather clauses, violence and lynching all
conspired to keep African-Americans from exercising
their right to vote.
>> Other communities of color were kept from the polls for
decades to come, among them Native Americans and Asian
American immigrants.
>> They were denied citizenship for years after 1920, so they
still couldn't vote. And the struggle to ensure that everyone
can exercise this essential democratic right? It continues
100 years after the 19th Amendment.
>> One of the lessons that we learn when we compare 1920 and
2020 is that voting rights is never a given.
>> It's never a guarantee. It's not a done deal in the United
States.