--- title: The History of Seneca Falls You Didn't Learn in School description: What many U.S. schoolchildren don't learn is that Susan B. Anthony was fighting to ensure Black men didn't get the vote before white women. canonical: https://time.com/5917131/seneca-falls-myth/ author: Olivia B. Waxman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-12-08T15:50:29.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-14T09:08:39.751Z article:section: History og:title: How History Classes on the Women’s Suffrage Movement Leave Out the Work of Black Voting Rights Activists og:description: Many of the Black voting rights activists who paved the way for Kamala Harris are not household names or even taught in U.S. schools og:url: https://time.com/5917131/seneca-falls-myth/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt73d90085d154d802/698a14f8b21a9c612f504529/1848-seneca-falls-convention.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: 1848-seneca-falls-convention og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How History Classes on the Women’s Suffrage Movement Leave Out the Work of Black Voting Rights Activists twitter:description: Many of the Black voting rights activists who paved the way for Kamala Harris are not household names or even taught in U.S. schools twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt73d90085d154d802/698a14f8b21a9c612f504529/1848-seneca-falls-convention.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How History Classes on the Women’s Suffrage Movement Leave Out the Work of Black Voting Rights Activists > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=e3a8908f-8dd4-4073-962b-8fe7bab3ca00&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=e3a8908f-8dd4-4073-962b-8fe7bab3ca00&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The History You Didn't Learn: Black Women and the Right to Vote [Watch (HLS stream): The History You Didn't Learn: Black Women and the Right to Vote](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/quG5ZZp3.m3u8) (9:13)  _Published 2020-12-08. The History You Didn't Learn is a series that sheds light on past events that may have been omitted, misleading, or just downright wrong in our history education in school._ by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/) and [Video by Arpita Aneja](https://time.com/author/arpita-aneja/) Dec 8, 2020 3:50 PM UTC by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/) and [Video by Arpita Aneja](https://time.com/author/arpita-aneja/) Dec 8, 2020 3:50 PM UTC As soon as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were projected to win the 2020 presidential election on Nov. 8, [women headed to Susan B. Anthony’s grave](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/08/us/election-results/visitors-flock-to-susan-b-anthonys-grave-to-mark-a-moment-for-women) in Rochester, N.Y., to pay homage to the most famous American advocate for women receiving the right to vote. The suffragist is buried about an hour away from Seneca Falls, N.Y., the site of a women’s rights convention on July 19-20, 1848\. It’s a [meeting](https://www.pbssocal.org/programs/not-for-ourselves-alone/seneca-falls-convention-8efxdw/) that American schoolchildren often learn is the [birthplace of feminism](http://projects.leadr.msu.edu/youngamerica/exhibits/show/feminismatsenecafalls) and [the start of the women’s suffrage movement](https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2020/02/04/19th-amendment-women-vote-anne-gardner). But what many American schoolchildren don’t learn is that Susan B. Anthony was also fighting to ensure Black men didn’t get the right to vote before white women, that many suffragists excluded Black women from their events and that the fight for voting rights began much earlier. Anthony promoted a predominantly-white history of voting rights activism, which is often believed to have ended in 1920 when the 19th Amendment was ratified, prohibiting states from restricting who can vote based on sex. In fact, Seneca Falls didn’t become known as the origins of the women’s rights movement until the 25th anniversary of the meeting in 1873, suggesting that crafting an origin story for the movement was not a priority before then, argues Lisa Tetrault, historian and author of _The Myth of Seneca Falls:_ _Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898_. Though Anthony is often reported as being at the 1848 Seneca Falls meeting, [she was not](https://www.pbssocal.org/programs/not-for-ourselves-alone/seneca-falls-convention-8efxdw/). It was a local affair, organized in a few days by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and attended by around 200-300 white men and women. [The only African American in attendance was abolitionist Frederick Douglass.](http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/douglass#:~:text=At%20the%20Woman's%20Rights%20Convention,African%20American%20at%20the%20convention.)  An 1859 Harper's Weekly cartoon parodying the 1848 women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y., captioned "Ye May Session of Ye Woman's Rights Convention - ye orator of ye day denouncing ye lords of creation," suggesting that suffrage is contrary to religious and natural law. Ken Florey Suffrage Collection/Gado—Getty Images By beginning to tell the history of the suffrage movement as starting at Seneca Falls, Anthony and Stanton tried to show that the movement had a long and distinguished history, according to Tetrault, as damage control for the jailing of provocative suffragist [Victoria Woodhull](https://time.com/3398175/victoria-claflin-woodhull/), while she tried to run for President in 1872. Starting the movement’s story then also allowed them to leave out suffragists who didn’t go to Seneca Falls and who they had fallen out with, at a time when there were internal disagreements between suffragists about the best way to achieve full equality for women in American society. For example, [Lucy Stone](https://time.com/5537834/lucy-stone-maiden-names-womens-history/) was not at Seneca Falls, but organized what’s considered the first national women’s rights convention in Worcester, Mass., in 1850\. Stone believed a state-level approach to women’s suffrage would be most effective way to guarantee women the right to vote, as opposed to amending the U.S. Constitution. She was also one of the white suffragists who supported the 15th Amendment prohibiting states from restricting voting based on race. Anthony and Stanton opposed the amendment because they did not think Black men should get the vote before white women. “Emancipation is the new reality. And many people are saying to women, ‘Black men’s right to vote must happen now for reasons of free people’s safety.’ And Stanton and Anthony will say ‘no, women’s suffrage should come first,'” Tetrault explains. “And they are unusual in the women’s rights coalition that they demand this. They’re staunchly opposed to Black men voting before white women — [in unspeakably racist terms.”](https://college.cengage.com/history/primary%5Fsources/us/female%5Fenfranchisement.htm) For African American women, for example, Tetrault says the meeting “was not a particularly important moment…Nor were the demands that they made particularly germane to the lives of women living under the twin oppressive forces of racism and sexism.” Stanton and Anthony further cemented Seneca Falls’ place, and their own place, through the _History of Woman Suffrage,_ a set of six-volumes boasting [more than 5,700 pages.](https://www.amazon.com/HISTORY-WOMENS-SUFFRAGE-Illustrated-Abolitionists-ebook/dp/B06XJ5K9FP) The book, however, long considered the definitive history of the 19th century suffrage movement, left out many Black voting rights activists.  Circa 1864 portrait of activist Sojourner Truth. Buyenlarge—Getty Images Starting the history of the voting rights activism at Seneca Falls leaves out the earlier roots of Black women’s voting rights activism. Martha S. Jones, historian and author of _Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All,_ has traced it back to the 1820s and 1830s. While Black women were not included at the 1848 Seneca Falls meeting, they were in Philadelphia that spring fighting to be allowed to be licensed preachers. Formerly enslaved upstate New Yorker and activist [Sojourner Truth](https://time.com/5876456/black-women-right-to-vote/) represented Black women at the 1850 national women’s rights convention, and her “Ain’t I a Woman” speech the following year framed voting rights as human rights that galvanized generations of voting rights activists. If the history of women’s rights starts at Seneca Falls, Americans “might have the misimpression that African American women weren’t interested in women’s rights,” as Jones puts it. “By 1850, Sojourner Truth is very much a presence in women’s rights circles, really shaping the debates. But she didn’t begin at Seneca Falls at all.”  Circa 1890s portrait of American journalist, suffragist and activist Ida B. Wells. R. Gates/Hulton Archive—Getty Images In fact, white suffragists excluded Black women from many of their events, even making them [march behind white activists at parades](https://time.com/5909556/stacey-abrams-history-black-women-voting/) in the early 20th century. After the ratification of the 19th Amendment, many white suffragists groups disbanded, leaving Black women on their own to continue fighting [the obstacles to voting: violence, voter intimidation, lynchings and more](https://time.com/5817380/voter-suppression-coronavirus/). State laws passed in the Jim Crow era to get around the 15th Amendment and 19th Amendments didn’t mention race, but were enforced unequally. Black Americans were far more often than white Americans forced to pay fees known as “poll taxes,” subjected to “literacy tests” and forced to answer questions like “how many bubbles are in a bar of soap?” So, Black women like journalist [Ida B. Wells](https://time.com/5909556/stacey-abrams-history-black-women-voting/) set up suffrage clubs to teach Black people what to expect when they went to vote. Sharecropper [Fannie Lou Hamer,](https://time.com/5692775/fannie-lou-hamer/) who was in her 40s when she learned she could vote, criss-crossed the country helping others do the same. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 made many of the Jim Crow era-obstacles to voting illegal. But the fight to preserve its teeth continues. In 2013, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling weakened federal oversight of state voting laws. Today, people in predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods [face longer lines to vote and a shrinking number of polling places. ](https://www.npr.org/2020/10/17/924527679/why-do-nonwhite-georgia-voters-have-to-wait-in-line-for-hours-too-few-polling-pl) In spite of those challenges, former Georgia House minority leader Stacey Abrams and activists like Nsé Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project, are among the voting rights activists who helped register more than 800,000 new Georgia voters since Abrams lost the governor’s race in 2018\. [Their efforts, and Black voter turnout, are credited with Georgia voting for a Democratic candidate for President for the first time since 1992.](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/us/politics/georgia-democrats-black-women.html) “You don’t win the right to vote and then that’s just it,” Ufot says of the lessons from the history of voting rights activism. “Throughout the course of history for every expansion of voting rights that brings in more people, we have a corresponding contraction, or corresponding backlash, that seeks to make it more difficult for people to vote, that seeks to shrink the electorate and shrink the number of people that participate in our democracy.” ## Transcript Kind: captions Language: en-US It's really important that we tell the truth about who contributed to the country that we live in today. That telling only a part of our history telling only a part of our narrative makes it seem as if there are only one group of people. There's only one type of person. We all know that that's not true. When students learn about women's suffrage in school, they often learn about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the so called mothers of the movement. And they are taught that it all started with a meeting in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. Oftentimes, the story of the Seneca Falls meeting is told as a kind of origin story. As the beginning of a movement for women's rights and ultimately, a movement for women's suffrage. And yet, when we realize the meeting is some 300 people, principally white, middle class women in a relatively remote upstate New York village, that is a hint that we probably need to look at some other places to get a fuller story. For Africa American women who had been organizing inside churches and other places since the 20s and 30s, this was not a particularly important moment, nor was it a meeting they would have attended. Nor were the demands that they made particularly germane to the lives of women living under the twin oppressive forces of racism and sexism. Black women are excluded at Seneca Falls, because they're not really invited. Two years later, a much bigger national convention on women's rights takes place. The 1850 meeting in Worcester, Massachusetts... Stanton and Anthony aren't even there. It was the first National Women's Rights meeting. So in some ways, that's really cohering activism that's taking place around the country in a way that Seneca Falls was just a local impromptu convention. One of the women who spoke there was famed abolitionist Sojourner Truth. Sojourner Truth will emerge later in the woman's movement as an important speaker on women's rights. She will also emerge as an abolitionist. By 1850, Sojourner Truth is very much a presence in women's rights circles really shaping the debates, but she didn't begin at Seneca Falls at all. So, with so much activity happening and women's rights in the mid-19th century, why did Seneca Falls, a small meeting with only white woman attending become one of the most talked about in history? Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was at the Seneca Falls meeting and was one of the organizers...and Susan Anthony...well, these two, along with some allies, begin to write the history of women's suffrage. And when they do, not surprisingly, perhaps, they privilege their own experiences and they settle on Seneca Falls as their origin story. Stanton and Anthony are dealing with a world where emancipation is the new reality and many people are saying to women, "Black men's right to vote must happen now," for reasons of free people's safety. And Stanton and Anthony will say "No," "women's suffrage should come first." And they are unusual in the Women's Rights Coalition that they demand this. They're staunchly opposed to Black men voting before white women... In unspeakably racist terms. And "Our movement..." they say repeatedly, "is the most important movement for human rights ever inaugurated." And they're undermining, really, the memory of abolition and the memory of emancipation in that process. It's no surprise then, that in history written by primarily white women, there are many Black voting rights activists we don't learn about. I think the world of Ida B. Wells and her activism... She's a Black woman who owned two newspapers, and she was an anti-lynching activist. And she was a founder of the Alpha Suffrage Club, which is Chicago's first black suffrage organization. While they fought and advocated for the right to vote for all women, they were mistreated within the larger suffrage movement because of their race. The Suffrage March in 1913, when Ida B. Wells showed up with the Illinois delegation and Alice Paul, who was a popular suffragette at the time, instructed them to walk to the back of the crowd. And while many of the Black women who showed up that day did... Ida B. Wells refused. The women who pushed the story of Seneca Falls died before the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920. But, the legacy of excluding Black woman persisted. "Susan B. Anthony and her followers have won, for women, the right to vote." It's easy to think of the story of women's suffrage as a kind of fully emancipatory and celebratory story that's, you know, just necessarily progressive. And in the following November, the ladies appeared at the polls on Election Day by hundreds of thousands. "The emancipation of womanhood in the United States was now complete." The 19th Amendment does not invest anybody with the right to vote. And we don't spend nearly enough time thinking about the language of the amendment, which is really key, saying you may not discriminate in voting on the basis of sex, it does not say women have a right to vote, which actually does not exist. For many white women clearing the obstacle of sex was sufficient to get them voting access. When the 19th amendment is adopted, the open secret is that too many millions of African American women in this country will not be able to vote because the amendment doesn't do anything to override the segregationist laws, the Jim Crow laws in the South, like poll taxes and literacy tests that are going to be imposed on black women, such that they won't be able to vote even after the 19th Amendment. We don't realize the ways in which the white suffrage movement threw women of color under the bus, allowed their continued disenfranchisement to go ahead, allowed their brutalization of their bodies to go ahead, and say nothing. We lose track of the fact that lots of other women are not emancipated in this story. That those women's rights are sacrificed. After 1920, African American women have to look up from the 19th Amendment to not only recognize that they are still disenfranchised, they have to look up to answer the question, "So, how are we going to win a right to vote?" That is the moment for the building of a new movement for voting rights. One that will take Black women and men until 1965, in passage of the Voting Rights Act. So, you don't win the right to vote and then that's just it. Throughout the course of history, for every expansion of voting rights, we have a backlash that seeks to make it more difficult for people to vote. That seeks to shrink the electorate and shrink the number of people that participate in our democracy. One recent and significant backlash happened in 2013 when the Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder removed some of the protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Even as we celebrate the centennial of the 19th Amendment, activists like Nsé Ufot remind us that voting rights remain threatened in many places. "Georgians have an opportunity to save our democracy." The State of Georgia has closed over 10% of their polling locations. Voting rights advocates have witnessed nearly 2 million people purged from Georgia's voter pool. I'm urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully. Black voters are subject to intimidation. New Americans are subject to intimidation. The 2020 election is the most recent example of the organizing power of Black women, as Ufot and others are being credited with turning Georgia blue for the first time in 28 years. I think that it's harmful that we only learn about white suffragists because it doesn't tell the full story of how we won. And if we're going to be able to fight future oppression, knowing the real story about how our ancestors looked oppression in the face and then defeated it helps us as we build toward the communities that we want to live in. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5917131/seneca-falls-myth/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5917131/seneca-falls-myth/"},"headline":"How History Classes on the Women’s Suffrage Movement Leave Out the Work of Black Voting Rights Activists","datePublished":"2020-12-08T15:50:29.000Z","dateModified":"2026-10-14T09:08:39.751Z","description":"Many of the Black voting rights activists who paved the way for Kamala Harris are not household names or even taught in U.S. schools","url":"https://time.com/5917131/seneca-falls-myth/","keywords":["video","Explainer","feature","Evergreen"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt73d90085d154d802/698a14f8b21a9c612f504529/1848-seneca-falls-convention.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Olivia B. 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