The Fight for Voting Rights in America Part 2
Part 1 | Part 2
By: Jessica Clark
This article was originally published in Black Voices Vol 16. The Democracy Issue. A newsmagazine distributed as an insert for Cape Gazette subscribers. You can read the digital version here.
Part I discussed the voting rights fight in the early days of our country. Part II continues the fight in modern times.
Over nine decades, efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution to recognize men’s and women’s rights have faced major challenges. Recent resurgence of women’s activism has refocused attention on gender equality issues, including the ERA and abortion rights.
Congress finally passed legislation known as the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972, recognizing women’s equal rights with men under the law. ERA was first introduced to Congress in 1923, approved in 1972, and ratified by 35 out of the constitutionally required 38 states by 1974. (On March 23, 1972, Delaware ratified the Equal Rights Amendment.) Despite concerted campaigns, ERA fell short of the 38 states needed to ratify it to become part of the Constitution. The window for ERA ratification, 1982, is long gone, but legal scholars argue that it is reversible.
The most recent amendment, the 27th prohibiting members of Congress from giving themselves a pay raise before an election, was adopted in 1991. It was written by James Madison in 1789 as part of the Bill of Rights and has spent 203 years in limbo. The ERA and several other amendments remain in the passed-but-never-fully-ratified category. An amendment granting the District of Columbia voting representation in Congress passed by Congress in 1978 and was ratified in 16 states before it expired. The 1810 amendment prohibiting American citizens from receiving nobility titles from a foreign government, and the Child Labor Amendment, passed by Congress in 1937 and ratified by 28 states, both required ratification by 38 states.
On December 17, 2024, citing opinions from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2020 and 2022, the Archivist of the United States, Dr. Colleen Shogan, who could certify the ERA as the next amendment to the Constitution, stated, “At this time, the ERA cannot be certified as part of the Constitution due to established legal, judicial, and procedural decisions.” The ratification deadline established by Congress for the ERA is valid and enforceable, stated the Justice Department. The ERA has expired and therefore is no longer pending before the states. For more opinions about ratification, visit https:// constitutioncenter.org/blog/can-the-equal-rights-amendment0be-brought-to-life.
In 1973, the Supreme Court recognized for the first time that the constitutional right to privacy “…is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” Roe v. Wade protected women’s rights to make reproductive health care decisions in all 50 states. In 2022, just shy of Roe v. Wade’s 50th anniversary, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the landmark decision granting abortion rights for all women. With the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, millions of women have lost that important right to reproductive freedom. In 2023, the Texas Supreme Court denied a woman an abortion even though her pregnancy was not viable, forcing her to leave the state. At the beginning of 2024, the Texas 5th Circuit ruled that Texas hospitals are not required to perform lifesaving abortions. Are we returning to the 1880s with the criminalization of abortions and when maternal death rates climbed from unsafe abortions?
In the 1800s, Black and White women’s freedoms and rights lagged far behind those for American men. Women were sharply limited: women were expected to raise their children to become good citizens. They lacked basic legal and economic rights; they could not own property, hold office, or participate in voting. They were discouraged from speaking at public gatherings. Formal educational opportunities were virtually unheard of. In the rare instances of divorce, husbands gained custody of children. In the 1830s, some abolitionist women began to notice some similarities between enslaved Black men and women and the restrictions placed on their own lives.
With the advent of women’s suffrage in the mid-1800s and the resurgence of both Black and White dynamic women leading the charge for women to vote, and since the 1900s to the present, much has been gained for equal rights and freedoms for the enslaved and for all men and women. Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1965 forbade discrimination in voting based on race, efforts by civil rights organizations to register Black voters met with fierce resistance in southern states such as Alabama. As a result, only two percent of Selma’s eligible Black voters (about 300 out of 15,000) managed to register to vote.
“We have come a long way, baby,” but we still have miles to go to achieve equality for all. We live in a mostly affluent country where the majority of Americans do not experience homelessness, hunger, lack of health care coverage, bombs decimating our neighborhoods, and where our rights and freedoms, for the most part, are recognized and honored. Are we experiencing the chipping away of our rights? Some of us are, to be sure. Where are our champions? Who will speak openly and unabashedly about our rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution? Who will challenge our rights being slowly chipped away by the present administration?
You, readers, are the answer. As my ESL students learned about the history of our country and the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, join parties of your choice and groups such as the League of Women Voters and become not only active, but activists. The history of our country and many of our rights are being challenged. Voting is the answer – and our right as Americans. Your voices are the answer.
