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Kimberly Monroe, PhD is a native of South Louisiana. She is currently an Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at Trinity Washington University in Washington, D.C. Her research interests include the African Diaspora, women's history, the Black Radical tradition and Hip-Hop in Africa.
On November 3, 1992, in a small city of Southwest Louisiana, a four-year-old Black girl received her first glimpse of the voting process. As I sat in the car with my three older siblings we waited until our mama returned from exercising her constitutional right as an American citizen. When she returned, I asked, “Who did you vote for?” She turned around, smiled saying, “Bill Clinton.” I had no clue who Bill Clinton was but, in my pre-k, educated mind I figured that if my mama, a strong Black woman with deep Louisiana and Senegalese roots voted for him, then maybe he was okay.
Fast-forward to 2007, my freshman year at Grambling State University, an HBCU in Northern Louisiana, I voted for the first time. Can you imagine, a young Black woman just embarking on my college journey would now take part in choosing the next leader of the free world. When Barack Obama won, Grambling lit up. The echoes of Jeezy’s “My President” fell onto the ears of the entire yard that night. A student, just out of band practice, began to play the “GSU chant” on his trombone. We danced, cried, hollered, and laughed in disbelief. We voted in the first Black president of the United States of America.
Louisiana, famously known for its southern creole cuisine, Mardi gras, jazz and zydeco music has been my family’s home for five generations. Growing up we learned very little about African American involvement in politics.. Of course, we knew about P.B.S. Pinchback, the first African American to become Governor of a U.S. State but nothing else. It was not until I attended Grambling that I encountered Black women like Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell and learned about their involvement in the Women’s Suffrage movement. I began to do more research about Louisiana history and came across Irene W. Griffin, the first Black woman to register to vote in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana in 1954.
Black women in Louisiana resisted the racism and voter suppression practices passed down throughout the history of the Bayou state. In 1896, Sylvanie Williams formed the Phillis Wheatley Club in New Orleans named in honor of the eighteenth-century enslaved African American poet and dedicated to a variety of political and social causes. The club was affiliated with the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), led by Mary Church Terrell.
We saw this resistance when Black women in New Orleans raised their voices to advocate for Black representation in Louisiana’s suffrage movement Susan B. Anthony and other white suffrage leaders were invited to speak to the club after African American women were excluded from the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) Convention in 1903 Williams used the visit as an opportunity to address the racial exclusion members of the club by Anthony and others. She stated:
“Flowers in their beauty and sweetness may represent the womanhood of the world. Some flowers are fragile and delicate. Some strong and hardy, some are carefully guarded and cherished. Others are roughly treated and trodden under foot. These last are the colored women. The colored woman has a crown of thorns continually pressed upon her brow, yet she is advancing. And sometimes you find her further on than you would have expected. When women like you Ms. Anthony come to see us and speak to us, it helps us to believe in the fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man and at least for the time being, in the sympathy of one.”
Williams also wrote a letter to the president of the National Council of Women, which was published in The Woman’s Journal, requesting that the NACW’s membership in the council be made a matter of public record. “In justice to the 10,000 intelligent colored women comprising the National Association,” she wrote, “I can do no less. My self-respect demands that I do no more.”
Black women, like my mama, continue to stand on the shoulders of activists like Irene Griffin and Sylvanie Williams. Black women are reminded of a time when we were told to march in the back or not come at all. We are reminded of the racism positioned at the cornerstone of the women’s movement for one hundred years. Despite the cowardly attempts to silence or erase us out of history, Black women continue to out-organize and outvote other groups in all facets of politics. Black women’s votes were responsible for the selection of Kamala Harris as Vice-President of the United States. We are the heirs of the work of Black suffragettes. We must continue this tradition. Voting is an integral part of the work of Black liberation, we are also confident that it will get us closer to our goal.. See you at the polls.