An intimate dialog between race and gender at Women’s Suffrage Centennial

Women’s Suffrage Centennial arrives amid deep cultural division, a presidential election year, and a global surge of the Black Lives Matter movement following the killing of George Floyd. The article asks whether the Centennial is a divider or unifier for American women in 2020. Revisiting the 14th and 15th Amendments and the roles of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Mary Church Terrell, it uses an interdisciplinary historical–cultural analysis to scrutinize the split between gender and race in the suffrage movement, trace their intersections, and map a “double consciousness.” It argues the suffrage movement made a monumental advance toward gender equality but fell short on racial equality, leaving a mixed legacy to celebrate and reevaluate. The Centennial should not be a single-issue gender celebration but an occasion for nuanced dialog between gender and race and a historic step toward crossing the color line that has marginalized African American women and other women of color from the power center.

Mimi Yang