One hundred years ago on Aug. 18, three-quarters of the states voted in favor of giving women — selectively white women — the right to vote, and the 19th Amendment was formally added to the Constitution.
But that was no thanks to Georgia, which was the first state to reject it.
In the years after the Civil War and Reconstruction, Georgia’s white political elite used all means to keep a movement tied to the North, and abolitionism, from taking shape. The women’s suffrage movement that took off more than 70 years earlier in Seneca Falls, New York, historically excluded the efforts of Black women.
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