"There are no chains so galling as the chains of ignorance—no fetters so binding as those that bind the soul, and exclude it from the vast field of useful and scientific knowledge," said Maria Stewart, a Black abolitionist and women’s rights activists to a racially mixed audience in Boston's Franklin Hall on September 21, 1832.

Stewart is said by historians to be the first American woman of any race to give public remarks. Her speech, entitled "Why Sit Ye Here and Die?" made a stirring appeal for Black economic progress and the advancement of women in education. Though she may not be as celebrated as suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Maria Stewart is among the pioneering voices for equality and women's suffrage in the United States. 

One hundred years since the ratification of the 19th Amendment, we recognize some of the lesser-known suffragists. Their stories reveal a protracted, complex struggle in which women of diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds worked together to secure voting rights for all American women. Ultimately their efforts could not guarantee suffrage to women of color who continued to fight for the ballot in the decades to come. But August 18, 1920—the date of the decisive ratification of the 19th Amendment by the Tennessee legislature—marks a watershed moment for gender equality and social reform in the U.S.

Sarah Grimké began to voice support for abolition and women's rights during the 1830s. The daughter of wealthy slaveholders in Charleston, South Carolina, Grimké moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to become a Quaker. Eventually, her sister Angelina joined her, and the two began making speeches and writing anti-slavery missives directed at Southern states. Officials in the region burned their essays and warned of their arrest, should they return to South Carolina. Undeterred, Grimké penned "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women" in 1838, in which she cited biblical scripture to argue the morality of equal rights:

"Woman has been placed by John Quincy Adams, side by side with the slave, whilst he was contending for the right side of petition. I thank him for ranking us with the oppressed; for I shall not find it difficult to show, that in all ages and countries, not even excepting enlightened republican America, woman has more or less been made a means to promote the welfare of man, without due regard to her own happiness, and the glory of God as the end of her creation."

In 1844, the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association - founded by women textile workers in Massachusetts - called for a 10-hour workday. The group sponsored petitions to the state legislature, mounted strikes, organized chapters in mill towns throughout Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and documented the harrowing work conditions women faced in the factories.

A mill worker and president of the Lowell Female Reform Association (LFLRA), Sarah Bagley was one of nine women to testify in a Massachusetts state legislative hearing about pay cuts and abusive work environments. Bagley also served as writer and editor for the New England Workingmen's Association's publication, the Voice of Industry.  She challenged societal norms by delivering remarks at the organization's first convention, and called on male workers to use their voting rights to support their female co-workers. 

In 1847—the year before the Seneca Falls Convention— The LFLRA’s campaign stalled in Massachusetts, but New Hampshire passed a 10-hour workday law. The measure proved unenforceable but provided a symbolic victory: the Lowell "mills women” showed their organizing power in response to inhumane work conditions and created one of the first labor associations for working women in this country—all in advance of the historic Convention of 1848.

Led by activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, the convention drew some 300 supporters to Seneca Falls, NY, and garnered support for women's rights nationwide. Two years later, abolitionist, women's rights activist, and former slave, Sojourner Truth addressed the second women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio. Her speech was entitled “Ain't I a Woman?”

“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.”

Between 1861 and 1865, the women's suffrage movement slowed amidst the Civil War. During the Reconstruction era that followed, the 14th Amendment—ratified in 1868—protected "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" from unjust state laws. Yet the law characterized citizens and voters as "male."

In 1869, two national suffrage groups emerged: the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) led by Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell. The organizations circulated petitions and held protests in support of the cause. However, the two entities split over two key issues: (1) whether a federal constitutional amendment or state by state regulations would better serve the movement, (2) support for the 15th Amendment, which was a ratified in February 1870, and granted Black men the right to vote.

The NWSA favored a federal constitutional amendment, while the AWSA viewed state-led efforts as the better approach. The 15th Amendment drew support from Stone, Blackwell, and the AWSA, but faced opposition from Anthony, Stanton and the NWSA because it did not extend voting rights to women of all races. Later, the two groups joined to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890. 

In 1872, as Sojourner Truth is turned away from a polling booth in Battle Creek, Michigan, Susan B. Anthony successfully casts a vote for presidential candidate Ulysses S. Grant. She is arrested and tried in her hometown of Rochester, New York, and convicted of illegal voting. Anthony is fined $100 plus court fees. 

Matilda Josyln Gage was a historian and activist who served in the National Women's Suffrage Association.  Along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Gage co-authored the first three volumes of The History of Woman Suffrage.  Historians have since rediscovered her personal story and contributions to abolitionist and women's rights causes. For instance, she hid those escaping slavery in her Fayetteville, NY, home. Gage respected Indigenous women, specifically the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois women, who enjoyed property and parental rights, and influenced political matters such as the appointment — and in cases of misconduct — the demotion of clan chiefs. She supported native treaty rights and became an honorary, adopted member of the Mowhawk Nation's Wolf Clan.

In 1878, Mary Ann Shadd Cary spoke at the NWSA Convention, having petitioned to add the signatures of 94 Black women in to the NWSA’s Declaration of the Rights of Women of the United States, a document submitted in commemoration of the nation’s centennial in 1876, and calling for American women to be “by law, free and independent citizens, possessing equal political power with our brother men.”

A teacher and dedicated abolitionist, Cary once resided in Pennsylvania, where she harbored those fleeing slavery. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act made involvement in the Underground Railroad more dangerous, she moved with her family to Canada, where she founded the Black newspaper, The Provincial Freeman. The paper was Canada's first abolitionist publication, and Cary became the first Black woman in North America to edit and helm a newspaper. She went on to obtain a law degree as a member of Howard University Law School's first graduating class.

Fellow journalist and educator Ida B. Wells-Barnett would launch a nationwide campaign in 1891 to give witness to and document the lynching of African Americans.   She joined with other suffragists, including Mary Church Terell, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and former slave Harriet Tubman to establish the National Association of Colored Women in 1896. The organization worked on civil rights, racial inequality, and women's suffrage.

In May 1912, sixteen-year-old Mabel Ping-Hua Lee agreed to help lead a momentous suffrage parade up New York City's Fifth Avenue. Despite strict laws that barred Chinese immigrants from citizenship, Lee became a pioneer for women's rights and a strong advocate for the just treatment of Chinese people in the U.S. She later attended Columbia University where she studied economics became the first woman to receive a doctorate, as well as the first Chinese woman in the U.S. to earn a doctoral degree. 

Suffragists like Lee, Mexican-American writer, editor, Jovita Idár, and Native American rights activist Zitkála-Šá also point to the diversity of voices encompassed by the women’s suffrage movement. We may not know all their stories, but we know their actions resulted in groundbreaking change: after Congress approved the amendment, the states ratified on August 18, 1920. And on August 26, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment granting women's suffrage, was certified and officially became law.

The work for broader equality continued, as activists like Zitkála-Šá who founded the National Council of American Indians in 1926 and worked to gain full American citizenship and suffrage of all Native Americans. And the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s shored voting right for African Americans and other groups such as non-English speaking American citizens through the sweeping Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The fight to protect voting rights continues to this day. As we strive to preserve this civic freedom, we owe much gratitude to, and draw from the courageous women from all walks of life who banded together to make this nation adhere to its founding democratic ideals.