Women
Three of the most important feminist reformers were Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony. They struggled as leaders to fight for women's rights. Stanton, Stone and Anthony were also insistent critics of men refusing political and social equality for women. They formed organizations which gathered women to protest peacefully in different ways and make proposals to change amendments in the constitution so that women would be included. The fight for women suffrage began in the 19th century. Women, and even some men, gathered at a convention in Seneca Falls NY, 1848 in which they drafted and approved the Declaration of Sentiments. This document was a bill of rights for women, including the right to vote. Four years after the Seneca Falls Convention, at the Women’s Rights Convention in Syracuse, Susan B. Anthony joined the fight. She argued that “the right women needed above every other was the right of suffrage”. In 1872, other suffragists brought a series of court challenges. These were designed to test if voting was a privilege of the US citizenship now given to women by the new 14th amendment. One of the challenges came out from the criminal prosecution of Susan when she illegally voted in 1872. The first case that got to the Supreme Court was the Minor v. Happersett of 1875, but this still did not work. After this case, suffragists started to take in consideration telling their concerns to the states and the Congress. In 1878, a constitutional amendment that said that “the right of citizens to vote shall not be abridge by the United States or by any state on account of sex” was proposed and would be introduced in each section of the Congress for the next 41 years.
| African Americans Protesting for the Right to Vote |
African American
African Americans were very determined to fight for their right to vote, just like women. They stood up for what they thought was right even when they were horribly treated, and when many other people tried to stop them. Still, African Americans did not surrender. They led peaceful protests and they finally achieved what they wanted.
After the Civil War, all black man received the right to vote according to the Constitution. Unfortunately this was not exactly true. Not many African Americans were able to vote due to the different laws whites developed to exclude them. That is when blacks decided that they had to protest in some way. African American leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., organized marches and protests to make whites realize what they were doing. Martin Luther King Jr. led a protest in Selma, Alabama and then a fifty mile march to register African Americans to vote. Another march of African Americans working towards the right to vote was the one that occurred in 1965, which became known as Bloody Sunday. A few people started to march at first, but then the idea caught up and many people went to walk. The police met them at a bridge to tell them to stop but they wouldn’t, and so it became violent even when the African Americans started their walk peacefully.
No comments:
Post a Comment