On International Women’s Day and A Day Without Women, we remember the staggeringly brave, brilliant and prescient African American women suffragettes who took on the double battle against their oppression due to their gender and their race. In honor of the amazing women of color leading our movement today, like Women’s March co-chairs Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour and Carmen Perez, and the Black Lives Matter co-founders Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi to name just a few, we place the A Day Without Women red frame around some of these African American suffragettes. The future is not only female, but it is of color. Women of color are creating the most powerful movements of resistance, and everyone needs to get in formation.
Pictured above: Image 1: (first row) Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells (second row) Sojourner Truth, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Elizabeth Piper Ensley. Credit: Lynn Yaeger, “The African American Suffragettes History Forgot.” Image 2: Woman protesting at the Women’s March on Washington, photo by E. Subrin.