You have most likely heard a particular lie from either your history class or whomever that told you that women have been able to vote since 1920. In the early 1800s, women have been fighting to vote for many years. After continuing to showcase their voice by protesting and advocating, it was finally implemented as the 19th amendment by 1920. However, not all women had the right to vote. In fact, this amendment was strictly exclusive to women who were white not people of color.
Yet, government officials did preventive actions toward people of color to deny their right to vote.
Native American women didn’t have the right to vote until 1924. Before that year, they weren’t even considered a citizen then. Although there was a citizenship for Native Americans, the citizenship didn’t apply basic rights such as voting while living in the United States. Congress granted the suppose citizenship to all Native Americans, but some states opposed it. They made frivolous laws and policies to not allow any Native American to have their deserved rudimentary rights as a citizen.
Asian women didn’t have the right to vote until 1952. Previously, Asian Americans were just undocumented immigrants in the United States. Asian Americans were denied to vote by discriminatory laws against citizenship to undocumented immigrants that transcended every Asian American to be ineligible to vote. It took many years to allow a law that let ever every Asian subgroup to be citizens. This took a turn when Chinese Americans got the right to vote in 1943. Subsequently, the Asian Indians and other Asian Americans in 1952 got the right under the Voting Rights Act.
Black women didn’t have the right to vote until 1964. They were excessively mistreated, despite of the fact that African americans could vote in the late 1960s. Certain states would make black women and men take literacy tests and intimidated them to make them not vote. Additionally, they were using voting taxes. That following year was the end of the excessive tax to vote and gave right to vote for black people.
This perpetual lie eradicates the adversities that non-white women had to go through to be able have the equal right to vote just like white women. Indeed, the woman suffrage protested and advocated to be able to vote but was it entirely inclusive? No, saying this is blatantly whitewashing the history of the women suffrage and ascribed to white women. People of color struggled too, they had to rebuttal their deprivation to vote. The women suffrage was a movement in history that revolutionizes the disenfranchisement in the United States.
