Gender and sexuality

ASALH’s 2020 theme comes as the nation marks the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment (1920) and celebrates the sesquicentennial of the Fifteenth Amendment (1870). These constitutional amendments reshaped the American political landscape with the culmination of suffrage for women and granting black men the right to the ballot after the Civil War. The theme speaks, therefore, to the ongoing struggle on the part of both black men and black women for the right to vote.