New Jersey's Constitution Briefly Allows Some Black Women to Vote

New Jersey's 1776 constitution granted voting rights to all inhabitants who met property requirements, which in practice allowed some free Black women and Black men to vote in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This made New Jersey unique in the early republic. The right was revoked in 1807 when the legislature restricted suffrage to white male citizens, but for a brief period New Jersey represented an unusual precedent for broader political inclusion.