Martha Jones : "Vanguard"
February 18, 2021
In the standard story, the suffrage crusade began in Seneca Falls in 1848 and ended
with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. But this overwhelmingly
white women's movement did not win the vote for most black women. Securing their rights
required a movement of their own.
In Vanguard, acclaimed historian Martha S. Jones offers a new history of African American women's
political lives in America. She recounts how they defied both racism and sexism to
fight for the ballot, and how they wielded political power to secure the equality
and dignity of all persons. From the earliest days of the republic to the passage
of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond, Jones excavates the lives and work of black
women—Maria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Fannie Lou Hamer, and more—who
were the vanguard of women's rights, calling on America to realize its best ideals.