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Vanguard
Book

Vanguard

How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All

Martha S. Jones
Basic Books, 2020

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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Comprehensive
  • Overview
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Most people know about the contributions of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in securing rights for women in the United States, but few are aware of their Black female contemporaries, leaders who worked for decades first to abolish slavery, then to secure universal suffrage. Black women leaders continued the long push to exercise their rights despite Jim Crow laws and discrimination meant to suppress their votes. They helped build the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Martha S. Jones recounts the stories of the unsung heroines who led the long struggle for Black political equality and women’s suffrage rights.

 

Take-Aways

  • Black women in the early American republic first joined politics in their churches and in the press.
  • White and Black women sometimes joined together to fight slavery.
  • In 1848, Black women campaigned for rights in the church rather than at Seneca Falls.

About the Author

 Martha S. Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and history professor at Johns Hopkins University. She also wrote Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America and All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture.

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