America’s suffrage leaders were women who recognized that the right to vote is essential to any meaningful form of citizenship. The 19th Amendment was ratified August 18, 1920.
Ida Wells-Barnett founded the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago in 1913 and when the club sent her to march in the famous suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., that spring, word came down that the African-American suffragists were to march at the end.
“Either I go with you or not at all,” Wells-Barnett said. “I am not taking this stand because I personally wish for recognition. I am doing it for the future benefit of my whole race.” She marched with the rest of the Illinois delegation.
Wells-Barnett, born to slave parents in Holly Springs, Mississippi, carved out a distinguished journalistic career, focusing on investigating lynching in the deep South. She pursued her vocation in Memphis until that became too risky. Then she moved to Chicago, where she continued her journalistic career and was an acclaimed civil rights and suffragist leader.
Full of honors, Ida Wells-Barnett died March 25, 1931, at the age of 68, in Chicago. She and her husband share a tombstone with the epitaph “Crusaders for Justice,” a play on the title of her autobiography.
And as we move closer to the ratification of the 19th Amendment, for which she worked, let us say a few words of thanks for the valiant lady who refused to allow the famous 1913 parade to be a wholly racially-segregated affair.
