ExplaAn intimate dialog between race and gender at Women’s Suffrage Centennial
Mimi Yang
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 7, Article number: 65 (2020) Cite this article
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Abstract
Women’s Suffrage Centennial has arrived in a culturally divisive time in the United States as well as in a high-stakes presidential election year. All this is accompanied with the emergence of Black Lives Matter movement on a global-scale in the wake of the African American man George Floyd’s death under the knees of white police officers. In an “I cannot breathe” America at a new cultural awakening moment, is the Centennial a divider or unifier for American women in 2020? This article aims to answer the question by revisiting the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution and iconic figures like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, and Mary Church Terrell. In an interdisciplinary approach anchored in both historical and cultural studies, the article scrutinizes the split between the two visceral elements pertinent to cultural identity—gender and race—in Women’s Suffrage Movement, draws a pattern of their intersection, and maps out a “double consciousness” (to borrow W.E.B. DuBois’ term). The article argues that the women’s suffrage movement was indeed a gigantic step towards the American ideal of gender equality but it fell short of racial equality. There is a mixed legacy to embrace and to reevaluate at the same time. Therefore, Women’s Suffrage Centennial should not and cannot be a single-issue gender celebration, nor a one-size-fits-all symphony, but a landmark occasion for an intimate and nuanced dialog between gender and race. The article suggests that the Centennial should not only celebrate white American suffragists, but should be an opportunity to make a historic step to cross the color line that has cutoff African American women, as well as women of color from other races, ethnicities, and heritages from the power center.
Introduction
The right to vote defines constitutional citizenship. A century ago, the long-and-hard-fought victory of women’s right to vote culminated with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on August 18, 1920, thus completing a full circle of citizenship for woman. She could now vote like her (white) male counterparts as an equal and full citizen. On the surface, this is an indisputable narrative, and in fact, has found its way into textbooks and seeped through the nation’s imagination for a century. However, if the constitutional right to vote is a basic definition of a citizen, women of color were still not able to exercise their full citizenship in 1920 but until 45 years later in the era of the Civil Rights Movement, with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. As one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil right legislation, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 addressed manmade obstacles that had prevented African Americans and women of color in general from participating in nation’s political life. The 1965 Act eventually removed literacy tests, poll taxes,nation:
