Black women in Mississippi actively participated in the suffrage movement after the Civil War. They fought actively for women’s suffrage even as they supported Black men and passage of the 15th Amendment. With passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, Black women could not claim victory. It would take another 40 years before they could exercise the right to vote. White supremacy robbed Black women of the right to vote. White women, who should have been allies in the fight for women’s suffrage, turned their backs on Black women. Black women, then, fought both racism and sexism in the struggle for the right to vote. They created a vibrant, active political culture that began during the Civil War. They attended political rallies, campaigned and raised money for candidates, monitored polling places, and counted ballots. They participated actively in political clubs, first in Loyal Leagues and later in Republican Clubs. Black women built a vibrant political culture in the church, secret societies, clubs, and even their independent enterprises. They did so despite being shunned by White women suffragists; subjected to extralegal racial sexual violence and economic repression by Whites; and undermined by the sexism of Black men. This presentation provides an overview of the 100-year-fight by Black women in Mississippi to maintain their place in public political discourse, from the Civil War to passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
A scholar of black women’s history, Dr. Garrett-Scott teaches courses at the University of Mississippi in the Departments of History and African American Studies. She is a specialist in the history of gender, race and the political economy in the United States with a particular emphasis on black women in business in the early twentieth-century South. In addition to teaching a course about Mississippi daughter Oprah Winfrey, she teaches a course on Black Mississippi History. She published an article in an international business history journal on Minnie Cox of Indianola, who, after being the target of extralegal violence during the Indianola Affair (1902-1903), co-founded one of the earliest black-owned banks in Mississippi and the first black-owned insurance company in the country to offer whole life insurance, the Mississippi Life Insurance Company.
*Presentation will take place in the Nissan Auditorium in Perkinson Hall
