Preserving Our Legacy: When Voting Rights Didn’t Protect All Women — And Why North Carolina’s Gerrymandering Still Matters Today

By Karen D. Spigner

August 26, 2020, marked the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, a milestone often celebrated as “when women won the right to vote.” But as historians Martha S. Jones and Daina Ramey Berry remind us, that narrative was never true for all women. For Black women, the right to vote was not granted in 1920 — it was promised, then systematically denied.when voting rights didnt protec…

And today, a century later, North Carolina’s newly gerrymandered districts show us that the struggle is not ancient history. It is ongoing, active, and sitting right in our back yard.

A Century Ago: The 19th Amendment Opened the Door — and States Slammed It Shut

When the 19th Amendment prohibited discrimination “on account of sex,” Black women saw only a symbolic…