The Racist History of Women’s Suffrage
August 2020
During the summer in 2020, it was difficult for my mind to think of anything else but Black Lives Matter. As a Chinese-American woman, I was re-examining the privileges that came with my identity and challenging myself to become a better educated ally to the movement. On the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, I just so happened to stumble on Treva B. Lindsey’s op-ed in the Times called “The problem with celebrating the 19th Amendment”. Wow, this was mind blowing 🤯 I just learned about the need for intersectional feminism from the past few years of Women’s Marches but I was really enlightened to learn that it was also an issue during the women’s suffrage movement. I couldn’t stop myself from going down the Internet rabbit hole and I knew I had to share this piece of history on my podcast’s Instagram.
Type: Instagram carousel post
Tools: Canva
The Process
Collecting the data
Since I had just read the op-ed the morning of the 100th anniversary, I knew I had to quickly put together the series and post it on IG before the day passed! It made sense to research on the topic while drafting the posts in Canva. I was copying and pasting snippets of information and rearranging the content to make sure the story flowed. If I had more time, I probably would’ve taken the time to scribble down notes on a paper pad or type them in Evernote.
Designing in Canva
I thought that for a post about history, it would be fun to make the background look like old-timey paper - so the off-white crinkly paper felt like a fit! For an IG series of posts that has a lot of text, I feel it’s important not only to have bolded header topics but to also include contrasts when highlighting important phrases, especially since we have such short attention spans on IG nowadays. I wonder if it was unconsciously sexist of me to choose a pink highlighter color? 😧
What I Learned
The most important takeaway for me was learning that women of color didn’t have the right to vote until so much later after white women! That blew my mind away because school had led me to think that the ratification of the 19th Amendment gave all women the right to vote. It made me really appreciate my right to vote since it was only given to women of color 50+ years ago. Of course, it makes me worried about voter suppression laws that still continue to happen even in this day and age 😞
I was really happy with the flow of the posts: introducing examples of xenophobia and racism from white suffragists, showing examples of women of color from varied backgrounds that had fought for the right to vote during the movement, when all women of color actually gained the right to vote, and why this part of history was so important to know during Trump’s presidency (hint: lots of white women voted for Trump and thereby supported his sexist policies in 2016 and 2020 compared to women of color).
When I took a look at my IG insights after posting this, I learned that:
It had reached 2,667 accounts (81% who weren’t following me)
It was saved 93 times
And it was shared via DM 212 times!
This was the most viral post that I had ever created! I was getting a flood of likes and reposts like I never experienced before. Even though I was getting a rush of serotonin from it, I was happier knowing that this was an important but lesser-known part of U.S. history that resonated with so many people.