ALERT Collective Blog

  America has been dominated by a two party system for most of its history, but those parties have not always been the same. Today the Democrats, currently a center-left (relative to the rest of the world) party and Republicans, currently a right party, are the dominant parties. But this relative consistency belies the complicated inconsistency of the parties themselves. You may have heard that the Republican Party, a party that is involved with the ongoing disenfranchisement of Black Americans , was the party of Anti-Slavery and Abraham Lincoln . Likewise the Democrats, the party responsible for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the New Deal was also the party of Andrew Jackson and The Trail of Tears. This is all true. To understand how, we must have a brief look at the original two political parties of the USA.   John Adams and Alexander Hamilton were both, despite a mutual hatred of each other, members of the Federalist Party, a party concerned with a strong central go...

In addition to the general history and the underlying racism of the women’s suffrage movement, it’s important to recognize some local heroes to mark the 100 th anniversary of adding the 19 th Amendment to the Constitution. Mary Ann Shadd Cary , born in Wilmington in 1823 to free African American parents, was a powerful and outspoken advocate for the abolitionist movement and women’s suffrage during the Civil War and beyond. Her family moved to Pennsylvania when she was ten years old for her education – black children were not allowed to attend school in Delaware – then to Canada after the Fugitive Slave Act threatened her family’s freedom. Shadd Cary returned to the U.S. during the Civil War, encouraging African Americans to join the North in the fight against slavery. After the war, she became an active member of the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), speaking to the House Judiciary Committee in support of the 14 th and 15 th Amendments and women’s voting rights. Sh...

  One hundred years ago - on August 26, 1920 - the United States officially adopted the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, asserting that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” While most people are aware of the women’s suffrage movement, a large part of the story generally goes untold: the racial divides that both ignored the significant contributions of non-white suffragettes and worked to keep many women of color from receiving the right to vote for many years to come. As the U.S. women’s suffrage movement progressed, inclusion was frequently a battleground. When the 15 th Amendment (granting African American men the right to vote, but excluding women ) was introduced in the late 1860s, the women’s suffrage movement split between those in favor and those opposed to it. The National Woman Suffrage Association ( NWSA ), led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton , vehem...