As we approach the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, African American studies specialist Dr. Marilyn Sanders Mobley says it’s time academia recognized the contribution of women of color in the Suffrage Movement.
This week, Mobley returned to her undergraduate alma mater, Barnard College, to present the lecture, “The Difference Intersectionality Makes: Teaching the Suffrage Movement Today.” It is possible, she said, to celebrate women fighting for and earning the right to vote while also criticizing the telling of this history.
Mobley, who is professor of English and African American studies at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), mentioned the names of women who helped shape her thoughts on taking an intersectional approach to the teaching of the Suffrage Movement. She especially highlighted the work of influential legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in establishing the concept of intersectionality.
Mobley showed a video of the song “Four Women” performed by Lisa Simone, Dianne Reeves, Lizz Wright and Angélique Kidjo. “I shared this rendition of the Nina Simone song…because I wanted to begin with an example of what I call ‘both and’ thinking of the ways in which race is both an important category of identity and to call attention to the diversity within the category of Black women,” said Mobley, who from 2009–2019 served as the inaugural vice president for inclusion, diversity and equal opportunity at CWRU.
“The occasion of the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment is an opportunity to remember … the ‘both and’ history of the Women’s Suffrage Movement,” said Mobley. “The Suffrage Movement was both about the right to vote for all women and it is an opportunity to remember the history of that same movement for the ways in which it exposed how women of color were often excluded from the narrative even as they were very much a part of the struggle.”
The proclivity to tell the story of suffrage from the perspective of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone and other White women leaders of the movement does an injustice to the women of color who were part of it. Mobley said these women were simultaneously engaged in three levels of struggle —enslavement, racial violence and persistent injustice following abolition.
“I recently saw an example of this exclusion in the narrative when I when I went to the Women’s Suffrage Movement web page at the National Women’s History Museum website,” said Mobley. “As a Black woman, as a Black scholar and as an American citizen who has received three degrees in this country, I’ve been keenly aware of how other omissions and exclusions of people who look like me have contributed to the narrative, how it affects the larger American narrative that others are taught and believe.”
