Hattie Redmond (1862-1952) was a champion not only of the struggle for woman suffrage, but also for the achievement of full citizenship for women. Redmond worked in professions available to her as an African American woman, primarily as a janitor for the District Court judges of Oregon, for which she procured a pension. She also worked ceaselessly for civil rights, and participated in the Oregon Colored Women’s Council (also known as the Oregon Colored Women’s Club), and served as president of the Colored Women’s Equal Suffrage Association during the 1912 campaign for woman suffrage (Dilg, 2020).

Lizzie Koontz Weeks (1879-1976) of Portland, Oregon, was a strong political activist whose activism started after the passage of woman suffrage in Oregon in 1912. Weeks worked to mobilize members of the African American community to vote in the first national election. The African American women voters were mainly Republican party affiliates. In support of the opportunity to vote in the first national election, the African American women formed the Colored Women’s Republican Club and elected Weeks as president (Jensen, 2020).

Mary Laurinda Jane Smith Beatty (1834-1899), another Portlander, was one of several women, including Abigail Scott Duniway, Maria Hendee, and Mary Lambert, to cast ballots in Portland in the 1872 election. Though they were placed under the ballot box and never counted, the moment of activism marked the fervent era of strategic and radical acts in the struggle for woman suffrage in Oregon and nationally (Ward, 2020).

The 1890s marked the growth of the black women’s club movement. Ida B. Wells, an outspoken civil rights activist, founded numerous black women’s clubs during her travels throughout the United States. Mary Church Terrell unified the black women’s clubs of the country under the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. The National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, as well as smaller local clubs, supported education, health care, and woman suffrage, and also fought firmly for civil rights and to dismantle the systemic, institutional racism rampant in the country (National Women’s History Museum, n.d.).

Although the suffragists in NAWSA and the National Woman’s Party were fighting for a basic civil right for women, they were not immune to a pervasive racism that we still find among us today.