Susan B. Anthony

150 Years After Ratification of the 15th Amendment, Black Votes Are Still Contested: The Black fight for the franchise

Mel Reeves, Minnesota Spokesman-ReviewMarch 12, 2020

“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 race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” So reads the 15th Amendment, ratified on February 3, 1870, the third of what came to be known as the Reconstruction amendments.

History News

Suffragist Coralie Franklin Cook: First Descendant of Monticello Slave to Graduate College

Stacy M. Brown, Special to The Washington InformerDecember 6, 2019

Born into slavery in Lexington, Virginia, in 1829, Cook became the first descendant of a Thomas Jefferson Monticello slave known to have graduated from college. In 1880, she graduated from Storer College in West Virginia before becoming a teacher.

Op-Ed Opinion

Child Watch: Recognizing All of America’s S/Heroes

Marian Wright Edelman (NNPA News Wire Columnist)April 28, 2016

Every day I wear a pair of medallions around my neck with portraits of two of my role models: Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. As a child I read books about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. She and indomitable and eloquent slave woman Sojourner Truth represent countless thousands of anonymous slave women whose bodies and minds were abused and whose voices were muted by slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and confining gender roles throughout our nation’s history. Although Harriet Tubman could not read books, she could read the stars to find her way north to freedom. And she freed not only herself from slavery, but returned to slave country again and again through forests and streams and across mountains to lead other slaves to freedom at great personal danger. She was tough. She was determined. She was fearless. She was shrewd and she trusted God completely to deliver her, and other fleeing slaves, from pursuing captors who had placed a bounty on her life.