Argumentative Essay On Women's Suffrage

The Women’s Suffrage movement is often credited to white women suffragists, women including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are thought to be the ones who paved the way for future generations of young girls. Although it is true that they helped to create and further the movement, there are many women of color suffragists who are often overlooked when discussing the topic. It was a fight for all women’s suffrage, however minority women had a particularly difficult time. Even after the passage of the 19th amendment, Women of color were still often kept out of the polls, and struggled to maintain their right to vote. Notable minority women figures, such as Mary Church Terrell, Sojourner Truth, Tye Leung Schulze, Jovita Idar and Marie

Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner, who has a PhD in women's studies, expressed that, “It didn’t start with white women… Indigenous women have had a political voice in their nations long before white settlers arrived” Native American women are often said to have inspired the women’s suffrage movement, as they had a political voice in their tribal communities long before white women gained their right to vote. White leaders of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, looked to a Native American confederacy, the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, when they were struggling to move forward within the movement. The Six Nations confederacy had, and still has, a structure that is based on female authority where they have responsibilities such as growing and distributing food, handling land transfers and handling decisions concerning war. This was a foreign concept to Euro-culture in America, where women had little say in what went on in the government. Native American women influenced women in Euro-culture to fight for a say in how their government performed. However despite their influence, women of color still had significantly less rights than white women when women were finally granted the right to

Women of color were arguably the motivation for the movement, and without them, the movement would most likely not have been as successful as it was, and continues to be. Sojourner Truth, Mary Church Terrell Tye Leung Schulze, Jovita Idar and Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin are just a few of the incredible women of color suffragists’ who continued their fight after being continuously oppressed. In spite of absence of support, these women of color suffrage leaders, along with many others, changed the way future generations would