The Role of Race

Louisiana Women’s Collection: A History of Political Activism



The public woman face of Louisiana suffrage was that a middle or upper class white woman. Kate Gordon, founder of the Era (Equal Rights Association) Club, opposed federal suffrage as she sought to maintain the South’s racial hierachy that had recently been reaffirmed through the enaction of Jim Crow.

The Woman Suffrage Party, though more amenable to federal suffrage, used racially charged arguments in letters to local businesses soliciting support. Despite the national ties necessarily maintained by women’s suffrage, records indicate no effort on the part of the major suffrage groups to work with African-American suffragists to expand the right to vote to women of color.