Women of Color and the Fight for the Vote – Introduction

Women of Color and the Fight for the Vote – Introduction

December 19, 2025

KEY TO COVER IMAGES: From Top Left (clockwise): Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Frances E.W. Harper, Zitkála-Šá, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mary Church Terrell, Founders of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW, 1896), Founders of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc® (1908), Founders of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc (1913), Nannie Helen Burroughs, Ida B. Wells in 1913 Suffrage Parade Soledad Chávez Chacón, Dr. Dorothy Height, NACW marching at The White House (1946), Women marching at the March on Washington (1963), Rep. Shirley Chisholm (1972), Fannie Lou Hamer, Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, and nominee for President Kamala Harris (center).

PHOTO CREDITS: We appreciate all of the individuals and organizations who provided photographs and images for Women of Color and the Fight for the Vote: Alabama Department of Archives and History (Apr); Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc (Cover); AP Images (Jun); AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee (Jan); Austin History Center, Austin Public Library. University of Texas (Apr); Baltimore Sun Media/Amy Davis (Intro); Sen Carol Moseley Braun (Cover); Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives (Cover, Sep); Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc (Cover, Nov); Elijah Nouvelage (Jan); Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images (Oct); George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress (Cover, Mar, Oct); Library of Congress (Cov, Feb, Mar, Jul); Library of Congress/Carl Van Vechten Collection (Jun); Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum (Aug); Mario Eugene Page (Nov); Marion County Voter Guide, 1952 (Feb); Metropolitan Museum of Art (Feb); MomsRising (Oct); Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Manuscript Division Howard University (Jul); National Archives (Jun, Aug); National Archives/Rowland Scherman (Jun); National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, Inc (Cover, Jul); National Portrait Gallery (Cover); New York Public Library Digital Collections (Feb); New York Public Library Digital Collections (Feb); New York Times OTD (Aug); Newsweek (May); Oakland Museum of California (Cover); Project Gutenberg (Feb); Public Domain/Gertrude Käsebier (May); Public Domain (The Crisis) (Feb); Public Domain/Newseum (Feb); Public Domain, The California Eagle (Feb); Public Domain, The Chicago Defender (Feb); Scripps College/Women’s Suffrage and Equal Rights Collection. Ella Strong Denison Library (Oct); Sharon Famer (Nov); Stacey Abrams (Cover, Apr); State Library and Archives of Florida (Cover); Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post (Cover); US Department of Education (Nov); U.S. House of Representatives, Office of Terri Sewell (Nov); US House of Representatives, Official Websites (Sep, Dec); U.S. Senate, Official Websites (Dec); U.S, Senate Historical Office (Sep); University of Chicago Library (Apr); UTSA Libraries, Special Collections (Oct); Wikimedia Commons (Cover, Feb); Wikimedia, Women of Distinction (Feb); and Wikimedia/Warren K. Leffler (Cover).

Introduction

On August 22, 2024, Kamala Harris became the first Black woman and the first Asian-American woman to accept the nomination for President of the United States by a major party. Three and a half years earlier, when then Senator Harris was inaugurated as Vice President of the United States on January 21, 2021, she became the first woman of any race to win and hold this office. In her acceptance speech, she acknowledged “the generations of women, Black women, Asian, white, Latina, Native American women—who throughout our nation’s history have paved the way for this moment tonight—all the women who have worked to secure and protect the right to vote for over a century.”

This calendar is dedicated to all the women who have fought for the vote for all Americans. Its focus is on Black women and other women of color whose contributions led to the achievement of the vote but have not received the full recognition or the place in history that they deserve. Women who::

  • From the 1830s, travel widely advocating for abolition, suffrage, and other causes using their voices as preachers and orators; writers, poets, and publishers; and educators.
  • Organize—working through churches, clubs, and local groups; forming national organizations, like the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), and sororities; and fighting for social justice and civil rights for their communities.
  • Take to the streets and protest publicly. NACW founder and first President Mary Church Terrell; the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority; members of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority; Ida B. Wells, founder of Chicago’s Alpha Suffrage Club; and other women of color march in the suffrage parade of 1913 in Washington, DC.
  • Work in the Civil Rights Movement through churches and organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Septima Clark, for example, worked with the SCLC to establish more than 800 citizenship education schools.
  • Register to vote, vote, register others, serve as poll watchers, and work as electors (Dr. Thelma Daley, below).
  • Run for office—and win.

This 2025 calendar illustrates this story through the lives of some of these sheroes, but it cannot begin to capture even a fraction of the women who write and speak, organize, march, protest, carry signs, make phone calls, tweet, knock on doors, write letters, register, vote, run for office, win, and represent all of us. It is thanks in no small part to the cumulative efforts all these women over nearly 200 years, that a record number of people (more than 159 million) voted in 2020 and elected a woman of color to the second highest office in the land and who has, in 2024, been nominated for the Presidency of the United States.