African American Women and Suffrage in Louisville

Louisville’s African American women became active in groups that supported woman’s or universal suffrage by at least the end of the nineteenth century. Unlike in much of the South, African American men in Louisville had not been disfranchised; therefore, woman suffrage provided a very real possibility of empowerment for Black women. Often unwelcome in white women’s organizations in Louisville, Black women channeled their activism through their own organizations. Many Louisville African American women thus became active in the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and its affiliates.

Founded in 1896 with the coalescing of earlier Black women’s groups, the NACW supported woman suffrage throughout its history. While the NACW was at the forefront of suffrage advocacy among Black women, some joined other groups that championed this cause as well. Baptist women’s organizations, especially Baptist Church groups such as the Woman’s Convention (WC), founded in 1900, sought to diminish both gender and racial barriers for African Americans. The Baptist Women’s Educational Convention (BWEC), initiated in Kentucky in 1883, the first statewide organization of African American women in the U.S., also drew women who sought gender and racial equality. Reflecting the historical valuing of education among African Americans, the BWEC was formed primarily to support the educational mission of Louisville’s State University (later Simmons), one of the few schools of higher education nationally owned and administered by African Americans. These organizations were widely supportive of universal suffrage. Often suffragists belonged to all three groups. 

Louisville’s Black suffragists participated in numerous movements of reform to improve their community. Their efforts, however, both resemble and differ from those of white women progressives. Louisville’s African American suffragists supported temperance, kindergartens, orphanages, and other safety nets for the needy, as did other women active in reform movements; however, they called for universal suffrage as well as woman suffrage, as many Black men, especially in the deeper South, remained disfranchised. In addition, they sought to eliminate lynching, public discrimination in education, chain gangs and convict lease, and other policies harmful to African Americans. Many also became active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) after its formation in 1909.

The women on this list represent leaders in the organizations mentioned above and include participants in openly personal suffrage activity. Most, but not all, of those represented here were educated, middle-class women and active in charity groups. They were institution builders, such as  Mamie Steward  and  Hattie Harris , who helped finance and maintain the buildings on the State University campus—women who kept the University afloat. They were women who, like  Bertha Whedbee  and  Lizzie Bates , helped to build and run hospitals; physicians Dr. Sara Fiztbuler,  Dr. Mary Fitztbutler Waring , and  Dr. Artishia Gilbert Wilkerson ;  Martha Webster  and the many other women here who helped  build the Phillis Wheatley YWCA;  Mary Parrish  and  Sylvia Butcher , who assisted in building insurance companies, banks, and other financial and community institutions for the Black community;  Nannie Burroughs , who channeled her business acumen into the first local and then national training school for women, and  Lucy Flint  who lent her business skills to Baptist organizations and to Madame C. J. Walker’s business empire.

Some women were renowned artists:  Fannie Givens , famed for her portraits;  Alice Crutcher , prized for her exquisite sewing skills;  Cora De Sha Barnett ,  Mamie Steward ,  Lucretia Gibson  and many other gifted musicians; talented orators  Nannie Burroughs ,  Mary Parrish , and  Lavinia Sneed ; noted educators  the Nugent sisters ,  Ellen Taylor ,  Ella Robinson ,  Georgia Moore , and,  Maudellen Lanier ; nationally acclaimed librarian,  Rachel Harris ; eloquent writers,  Lucy Wilmot Smith , Parrish, Sneed, and others. Some were outstanding political activists, protesting separate railway coach laws (Parrish, Sneed,  Crittenden , and Waring), canvassing neighborhoods and holding rallies (Parrish, Butcher,  Eliza Kellar ,  Essie Mack , and  Patsie Sloan Martin ), and many others generally supporting political causes and encouraging community members to vote.

Church and education provided the chief extra-familial focus in the lives of these women, and the two were intimately connected. Louisville religious groups had sponsored church affiliated schools for Blacks as early as the 1840s, usually associated with the Methodist and Presbyterian churches. But by the late-nineteenth century, the Baptist Church had become a power in Louisville. In 1877 the white and influential Southern Seminary moved to Louisville, and in 1879, the Black General Association of Kentucky Baptists established the Baptist Normal and Theological Institute, which would become State University (later renamed Simmons University) in 1882. Baptist organizations thus became powerful forces in Louisville. Some suffragists here belonged to the Methodist (Gibson), Congregational (Whedbee, Rachel Harris) and Episcopal (Fitzbutler/Waring) Churches. Most, however, belonged to the Baptist Church, which formed the heart of their community activism; many were closely affiliated with State University, where they were students, professors, or both. State University, one of the few schools for African Americans with a medical and law school, drew students and teachers from other areas. Unlike most college-educated women, women at State University matriculated with men and served on the faculty.

As public schools, both normal and graded schools, became more available to the Black community, teachers in the Louisville Colored Schools, many of whom had graduated from Central Colored High School, became community leaders. Most often denied literacy during slavery, African Americans valued education, which became especially vital to women, as employment for uneducated Black women was usually limited to difficult, low-paying work as domestic servants and laundresses, or dirty, difficult work in tobacco factories. Employment as teachers provided rare professional employment. Most women identified here were born into slavery or were the children of formerly enslaved people. Some were illiterate in their youth; most came from parents who were illiterate. They demonstrate the importance placed upon education and the sacrifices families made to attain instruction and material resources for their children.

African American suffragists become more visible politically in extant records after 1920. (Note photo atop this page of Louisville women at the polls in the 1920 election.) Many arguments against woman suffrage, especially in the South, played on fears that African Americans would gain too much power if all women gained the vote. Therefore, many Black women kept a low public profile outside their own organizations and communities. In addition, white-owned newspapers, who gave scant attention to white women, largely ignored Black women. However, in 1912, when Louisville women gained the right to vote in school elections, Black women voted in larger numbers than white women. They continued that pattern after 1920, furthering the concern of many whites. Yet, Black women were undeterred, becoming delegates to Republican conventions, forming political organizations, holding political rallies, and canvassing neighborhoods to urge neighbors to vote.

Following passage of the 19th Amendment, when many of Louisville’s white suffragists joined the all-white League of Women Voters, most Louisville African American suffragists instead joined the National League of Republican Colored Women (NLRCW), forming local affiliates, such as the West End League of Republican Women and the East End League of Republican Women. African Americans had traditionally supported the “Party of Lincoln” and shunned the blatantly racist Democratic party, both nationally and locally. By 1924, the national Republican Party hired Hallie Q. Brown, immediate past-president of the NACW, to lead its Colored Women’s Department. Brown enlisted the extensive NACW network to inspire women across the country to advocate and vote for the Republican Party. In Louisville, Black women had felt the power of their vote immediately upon gaining suffrage, helping to defeat a 1920 bond proposal to fund the University of Louisville, a bond that would have taxed African Americans for the benefit of a school exclusively for whites. Black women also became delegates and officers in political organizations and conventions immediately after gaining the vote.

By 1925, Fannie Givens, vice-president of the Coolidge/Sackett committee in Louisville, reported to the NACW on “the great [1924] victory in Kentucky…Too much credit for the victory cannot be given to the colored women for the splendid work they did, especially in Louisville” in “delivering the state’s thirteen electoral votes” for Calvin Coolidge and installing Republican Frederic M. Sackett in the U. S. Senate. Givens added, “This shows the force of the NACW.”

Although African Americans have continually experienced voter suppression in many forms, Givens exemplifies the optimism and determination of newly enfranchised Black women in Louisville.

Adams, Luther. Way up North in Louisville: African American Migration in the Urban South, 1930-1970. Chapel hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

Aubespin, Mervin, Kenneth Clay, and J. Blaine Hudson. Two Centuries of Black Louisville: A Photographic History. Louisville: Butler Books, 2011. 

Davis, Elizabeth Lindsay. Lifting as They climb. New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1996 [1933].

Doyle, Ruby Wilkins.  Recalling the Record: A Documentary History of the African-American Experience Within the Louisville Public School System of Kentucky (1870-1975). Chapel Hill: Professional Press, 2005. 

Dunnigan, Alice Allison. The Fascinating Story of Black Kentuckians: Their Heritage and Traditions. Washington, D.C.: The Associated Publishers, Inc. 1982. 

Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina 1896-1920. Chapel Hill: University Press of North Carolina, 1996.

Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. “Clubwomen and Electoral Politics in the 1920s.” In Ann Gordon et al., African American Women and the Vote: 1837-1965. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997. 

___. Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church 1880-1920. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Howard, Victor B. Black Liberation in Kentucky: Emancipation and Freedom, 1862-1884. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993.

McDaniel, Karen Cotton. “Local Women: The Public Lives of Black Middle Class Women in Kentucky Before the Modern Civil Rights Movement.” Ph. D. Dissertation, University of Kentucky, 2013.

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Parrish, C. H. ed. Golden Jubilee of the General Association of Colored Baptists in Kentucky: The Story of 50 Years’ Work from 1865-1915. Including Many Photos and Sketches, Compiled from Unpublished Manuscripts and Other Sources. Louisville: Mayes Printing Co., 1915.

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Wheeler, Marjorie Spruill. New Women of the New South: The Leaders of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the Southern States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Williams, Lawrence H. Black Higher Education in Kentucky 1879-1930: The History of Simmons University.  Studies in American Religion. Volume 24.  Lewiston/Queenston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1987.

Williams, Lillian Serece, ed. Records of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, 1895-1992. Bethesda, MD. University Publications of America, 1995. [microfilm]

 Wright, George. Life Behind a Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865-1930. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985.

Carol Mattingly, Professor Emerita of English at the University of Louisville acted as primary researcher and writer.

Emily Barrett, graduate student at the University of Kentucky, created the Arc GIS Story Map, hosted by the University of Georgia.

The University of Louisville provided essential contributions to this project. Archives and Special Collections shared knowledge and retrieved archival materials. Images of some women were retrieved from Special Collections' digital collection; some photos of residences were located in the Urban Renewal collection. Special thanks to Tom Owen, Amy Hanaford, and Pam Yeager. 

Other important assistance at the University came from Christopher Poche, University of Louisville Current Periodicals and Microforms Specialist, who assisted with retrieving materials from microfilm. The Interlibrary Loan Department obtained materials unavailable in the University’s holdings. 

Codi Nicole Goodwyn, student specializing in biological anthropology, leads the Center for Archaeology and Curatorial Heritage‘s Cemeteries Curation Project at the University and helped to locate burial sites in Eastern and Greenwood cemeteries.

Lenora Jordan, Office Manager at Louisville Cemetery, assisted in locating burial sites in Louisville Cemetery and in Richmond Kentucky.

T’Nia Shakir Fuller, University of Louisville graduate and current intern at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D. C. was an early researcher on the project.

Alexis Doerr, University of Louisville graduate was an early researcher on the project.

Juanita White contributed information about the Kentucky Federation of Colored Women.