I'm curious about the intersectionality of gender and racial bias on this score - did the movement for women's suffrage include people of color? Were they marginalized or excluded? When the 19th amendment was passed, did it effectively enable all women of whatever race to vote, or were women of color still excluded?
>In the summer of 1920, as the states were considering whether to grant suffrage to women, Tennessee became a battleground. The 19th amendment would become law if 36 of the 48 states approved it, but only 35 had ratified the measure, and 8 had rejected it. Of the remaining states, only Tennessee was even close to holding the needed votes. When the state senate voted 25 to 4 in favor, suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt wrote, “We are one-half of one state away from victory.” The final decision would fall to the state house of representatives, where it appeared poised to fail by a single vote.
>On the morning of the vote, the General Assembly’s youngest member [at just twenty-two], Republican Harry Burn, who had been counted as a certain opponent of the amendment, received a letter from his mother:
>"Dear Son:
>Hurrah, and vote for suffrage! Don’t keep them in doubt. I noticed some of the speeches against. They were bitter. I have been watching to see how you stood, but have not noticed anything yet. Don’t forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the ‘rat’ in ratification.
>Your Mother"
>When his name was called, Burn said “aye” and the measure passed. The next day, he rose to explain his vote: “I want to take this opportunity to state that I changed my vote in favor of ratification because: 1) I believe in full suffrage as a right, 2) I believe we had a moral and legal right to ratify, 3) I know that a mother’s advice is always safest for her boy to follow, and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.
Source
Futility Closet, "Special Interests"
I was thinking about this while watching mental floss on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fM1czS_VYDI) about the American women's rights movement. Though I knew much in the video, and it is an important part of american history, when did other countries catch up? For that matter were we even the first to offer equal rights, or were we behind? Did the U.S. influence other nations on this matter? Did other nations have a similar history in its eventual equality of rights?
P.S. I know that many nations exist without equal rights among genders today, but this is mostly a comparison to those countries that do.
