🏳️‍🌈 Kathy E Gill 😷 @kegill.bsky.social Profile picture
Writer/speaker/journalist/professor. Active as @kegill at BSky and Mastodon. Account retained for reading lists.

Aug 18, 2019, 8 tweets

On the anniversary of the 19th Amendment, it's important to recognize that as recently as 1982, a married woman forfeited her right to vote unless she took her husband’s name.

medium.com/@kegill/my-nam…

The 19th amendment stated that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

But it was by no means a universal "guarantee."

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 enfranchised black women in the South.

Japanese women could not become naturalized citizens until 1952.

Native American women did not have their right to vote protected until the Voting Rights Act amendments of 1975.

colorado.edu/wgst/sites/def…

Brent Staples meticulously chronicles the history and conflict between white suffragists and their counterparts mired in the Jim Crow South. @nytopinion 02 Feb 2019

nytimes.com/2019/02/02/opi…

According to Staples, poet and novelist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper argued that "fates of black and white, rich and poor were 'all bound up together'.” Her argument is still at play today, as most white women voted for Trump in 2016.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

You probably didn't learn this in American history (Staples):
"In what became known as “The Election Day Massacre,” a white mob burned to the ground a prosperous black community in the Central Florida town of Ocoee after African-Americans tried to vote."
libguides.valenciacollege.edu/Ocoee

So yes, there is much to ponder today.

Not the least being America's "white" default setting.

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