The explanation was clear: Officials applied “practically the same rules of qualification to as are applied to colored men.” In Kent County, Delaware, their numbers were “unusually large,” according to Wilmington’s News Journal, but officials turned away Black women who “failed to comply with the constitutional tests.” In Huntsville, Alabama, “only a half dozen Black women” were among the 1,445 people of all races and genders who were registered, recounted Birmingham’s Voice of the People, an African-American newspaper. Nevertheless, in fall 1920, many Black women showed up at the polls. With the passage of the 19th Amendment, African-American women in many states remained as disenfranchised as their fathers and husbands. Unchecked intimidation and the threat of lynching sealed the deal. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses kept many Black men from casting their ballots. But by 1920, legislatures in the South and West had set in place laws that had the net effect of disenfranchising Black Americans. The 15th Amendment expressly forbade states from denying the vote because of race. The women who showed up to register to vote in the fall of 1920 confronted many hurdles. Women would still have to navigate a maze of state laws-based upon age, citizenship, residency, mental competence, and more-that might keep them from the polls. Instead, laws reserving the ballot for men became unconstitutional. The 19th Amendment did not, however, guarantee any woman the vote.
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