Performing and Politicizing “Ladyhood”
Performing and Politicizing “Ladyhood”
Black Washington Women and New Negro Suffrage Activism
This chapter explores the suffrage activism of black women in Washington. As one of the most pressing political issues of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the fight for universal suffrage was an important part of black women’s political activism throughout the New Negro era. The road to suffrage ended in Washington and black women suffragists in the nation’s capital were keenly aware the unique role they could play in advocating for universal suffrage. To understand the political culture of black women’s suffrage activism in Washington, the chapter centers on the March 1913 suffrage march in the nation’s capital to uncover the various dynamics of the suffrage movement and to specifically engage how black women thought about and enacted distinct political identities. For black suffragists, performative and aesthetic politics were resistive strategies for contesting their subordinate status in the political arena.
Keywords: suffrage, interracial activism, Washington, D.C, black women suffragists, politics, voting rights, Delta Sigma Theta, racial tension, sexism
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