19th Amendment Passes but Southern States Continue Blocking Black Women from Voting

The 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote in 1920, but the same mechanisms — poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and violence — that had disfranchised Black men continued to be applied to Black women. In Deep South states, Black women's voter registration rates remained near zero through the application of Jim Crow voter suppression tactics. White suffragist organizations made no effort to enforce Black women's voting rights. The 19th Amendment's promise was not extended to Black women in practice until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.