'It's a Struggle They Will Wage Alone.' How Black Women Earned the Right to Vote

The 19th Amendment, ratified a century ago on Aug. 18, 1920, is often hailed for granting American women the right to vote. And yet most Black women would wait nearly five decades more to actually exercise that right.

As the centennial of that Constitutional landmark arrives amid weeks of Black Lives Matter protests that have called for greater recognition of Black women’s contributions to society, historian Martha S. Jones aims to make sure that the Black American women who fought for voting rights will not be forgotten in her forthcoming book Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All.

TIME talked to Jones about the deep roots of this activism, which often predated the work of the famous white suffragists—and which still informs present-day debates over what history is worth remembering and how to chart a path to racial equality in the future.

TIME: In your book, you describe the 19th Amendment as marking a turn for Black women, but not in the way people might think. How so?

JONES: It’s a landmark moment when the U.S. Constitution includes an amendment that prohibits government from using sex as a criteria for voting rights. Like with any constitutional amendment, there’s a great deal more required in order to give it teeth.

In the case of the 19th Amendment, even as it’s ratified in August of 1920, all Americans are aware that many African-American women will remain disenfranchised. The 19th Amendment did not eliminate the state laws that operated to keep Black Americans from the polls via poll taxes and literacy tests—nor did the 19th Amendment address violence or lynching. Some African-American women will vote with the 19th Amendment. Some are already voting in California, New York and Illinois where state governments have authorized women’s votes. But many Black women faced the beginning of a new movement for voting rights in the summer of 1920, and it’s a struggle they will wage alone because now the organizations that had led the movement for women’s suffrage are disbanding.