Gena's Genealogy: Women's History Month 2020: African American Women's Suffrage Groups

Let's take a moment to pause from focusing on women's voting and the records left behind to discuss an important aspect of suffrage history. One that gets ignored too often.

When US suffrage history is discussed, the "big" names are typically the focus. Names like Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They are a part of that history but they aren't the only part. Obviously, they did a lot in that first wave of suffrage work. But there's also no doubt that their priority wasn't suffrage for all. And this lack of concern wasn't lost on the women who didn't look like Anthony and Stanton and other white suffrage leaders over the decades.

African American women "realized that there really wasn't as much common ground between African American suffragists and white, middle-class suffragists as there might have been in a society that wasn’t so polarized in questions of race," said Susan Ware, author of "Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote."[1]

So as we explore family history and suffrage, remember that like with any historical subject, there are diverse experiences. And those experiences aren't all upper to middle-class white women's. African American women were fighting for the same end goal so they organized their own suffrage groups to support that work. These groups were concerned not only with the vote but accessing that vote without intimidation. A problem that became obvious after the 15th amendment was ratified. They were also concerned about issues that terrorized their community, such as lynching. One such group was the Alpha Suffrage Club co-founded by Ida B Wells. According to the Encyclopedia of Chicago:

"The passage of the Illinois Presidential and Municipal Suffrage Bill in the summer of 1913 offered African American women in Chicago the opportunity to merge their social welfare activities with electoral power. This was primarily due to the creation of the first and one of the most important black female suffrage organizations in the state and the city, the Alpha Suffrage Club. Established in January 1913 by black club woman and anti lynching crusader Ida Bell Wells-Barnett and white activist Belle Squire, the club elected officers, held monthly meetings, claimed nearly two hundred members by 1916, issued the newsletter the Alpha Suffrage Record, and endorsed candidates."

You can read more about this Chicago based group on a blog post I wrote for GenealogyBank.

You can learn more about suffrage groups and their works by reading historical newspapers. GenealogyBank has a collection of African American newspapers.

Membership records are most likely found in archival collections which can be found on ArchiveGrid and other online archive websites.