Current:Home > MarketsDescendants of suffragists talk about the importance of women's voices in 2024 -FutureFinance
Descendants of suffragists talk about the importance of women's voices in 2024
View
Date:2025-04-15 17:01:33
Over a century ago, women in the United States were finally granted equal voting rights by the 19th Amendment. Decades later, their descendants are carrying on the family tradition and fighting for women's rights.
Michelle Jones Galvin is the great-great-great grand-niece of Harriet Tubman, who is best known for her work freeing slaves from the Confederacy. Galvin has worked with her own mother to share Tubman's story. The two are the authors of "Beyond the Underground: Aunt Harriet, Moses of Her People," which details Tubman's achievements, including her lesser-known work as a commander of armed military missions during the Civil War, and her efforts as a suffragist.
Tubman co-founded the National Association of Colored Women in 1896, which fought for the equality of women of color who had otherwise been left out of the suffrage movement.
"There was a mainstream movement (of) predominantly white women," Jones explained. "We know that there were African-American suffragists as well. Aunt Harriet's voice with regard to voting rights for women really spanned both of those contingents. They came together around the right to vote."
Even when women couldn't legally vote, Susan B. Anthony, president of the National Woman Suffrage Association, did so — but then was arrested.
"She never did go to jail or pay a fine," said Susan Whiting, her descendant. Whiting was named after Anthony, who was her great-great-grandmother's niece. "She wouldn't pay it, she never did pay it."
Whiting has followed in her ancestor's footsteps by chairing the board of the National Women's History Museum in Washington, D.C. There, she tries to educate the public about the women who were significant contributors to American history, and inspire young people to make their own change.
Author and public historian Michelle Duster is a descendent of one of those significant contributors. Her great-grandmother was the investigative journalist Ida B. Wells, who exposed the horrors of lynching in America and worked tirelessly to battle racism and advocate for suffrage.
"As a woman, as an African-American she had to fight at every front in order to have full citizenship," Duster explained. "She was threatened. Her life was threatened, and she dealt with a lot of violence, she dealt with a lot insults, people tried to discredit her, and so it was not an easy thing for her to do because she speaking out about the power structure in this country."
Duster has been working to preserve her great-grandmother's legacy for future generations by writing and editing books about Wells, including a children's book. She also helped develop a set of Chicago murals dedicated to suffrage.
"Given what's going on in our country right now, there's a great need for people to learn about the past," Duster said. "Everybody needs to have their voice heard."
This year, amid a nationwide attack on reproductive rights, many believe it's the women's vote that could decide the 2024 presidential election.
"I think the lessons that we can learn today is what Aunt Harriet and our founding mothers would say about voting, and that is 'Make sure that you do it, make sure that you take your voice to the ballot box,'" Galvin said.
- In:
- Women
- Women's History Month
Michael George is a correspondent for CBS Newspath based in New York City.
TwitterveryGood! (7)
Related
- Nevada attorney general revives 2020 fake electors case
- China’s foreign minister says Xi-Biden meeting in San Francisco would not be ‘smooth-sailing’
- Spooky savings: 23 businesses offering Halloween discounts from DoorDash, Red Lobster, Chipotle, more
- 3 Sumatran tiger cubs have been born at a zoo in Nashville
- Israel lets Palestinians go back to northern Gaza for first time in over a year as cease
- Israel strikes near Gaza’s largest hospital after accusing Hamas of using it as a base
- Olivia Rodrigo and when keeping tabs on your ex, partner goes from innocent to unhealthy
- Louisiana and Amtrak agree to revive train service between New Orleans, Baton Rouge
- Nearly 400 USAID contract employees laid off in wake of Trump's 'stop work' order
- Ohio high court upholds 65-year prison term in thefts from nursing homes, assisted living facilities
Ranking
- Backstage at New York's Jingle Ball with Jimmy Fallon, 'Queer Eye' and Meghan Trainor
- Maine hospital's trauma chief says it was sobering to see destructive ability of rounds used in shooting rampage
- Alleged Maine gunman tried to buy a silencer months before Lewiston shootings
- Matthew Perry Dead at 54: Olivia Munn, Rumer Willis and More Stars React
- Justice Department, Louisville reach deal after probe prompted by Breonna Taylor killing
- Israeli media, also traumatized by Hamas attack, become communicators of Israel’s message
- In Benin, Voodoo’s birthplace, believers bemoan steady shrinkage of forests they revere as sacred
- Trade tops the agenda as Germany’s Scholz meets Nigerian leader on West Africa trip
Recommendation
Bodycam footage shows high
12 people die in a plane crash in the Brazilian Amazon
Most Palestinians in Gaza are cut off from the world. Those who connect talk of horror, hopelessness
West Virginia's Akok Akok 'stable' at hospital after 'medical emergency' in exhibition game
Google unveils a quantum chip. Could it help unlock the universe's deepest secrets?
In Mississippi, most voters will have no choice about who represents them in the Legislature
Man charged in killing of Nat King Cole’s great-nephew
Israel says its war can both destroy Hamas and rescue hostages. Their families are less certain