New York Times: In Her Words: Finish the Fight!

By Veronica Chambers, Jennifer Schuessler, Amisha Padnani, Jennifer Harlan, Sandra E. Garcia and Vivian Wang

28 July 2020

It took the better part of a century to pass a law saying American women had the right to vote. Three generations of women, and their male allies, worked tirelessly to make the 19th Amendment — which decreed that states could not discriminate at the polls on the basis of sex — a reality. We call the right to vote “suffrage,” but for a long time, that word was a kind of shorthand for women’s rights. Without the vote, suffragists argued, women had little say over their lives and their futures and certainly much less when it came to the larger political questions that shaped the nation.

The 19th Amendment is a cornerstone of gender equality in our country, yet many of us know very little about the way the right to vote was won. For a long time, the history of the suffrage movement has been told mainly as the story of a few famous white women, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. It’s true they were among the most important leaders of the movement in the 19th century.

Mary Church Terrell and the Power of Language

Sometimes freedom is a matter of timing. Mary Church Terrell knew that lesson well. She was born in Memphis in September 1863 — the middle of the Civil War. Her parents had been enslaved, but Mary was born free, and she charted a course of leadership that helped change the lives of women and men across the nation. She became a suffragist. She fought for the rights of all people of color. Holding America to the promises of the Declaration of Independence — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all — became her life’s work.

These dreams were supported by her parents. Her father, Robert Church, was the son of an enslaved woman and a wealthy steamship owner who had allowed Robert to keep his wages. After Robert gained his freedom, he invested in real estate and became wealthy.

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