President's Message: Jessica Kronstadt

Mary Church Terrell – founder and president of the National Association of Colored Women – wrote: “And so, lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving, and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ere long. With courage, born of success achieved in the past, with a keen sense of the responsibility which we shall continue to assume, we look forward to a future large with promise and hope.” Ms. Terrell was a tireless advocate for Black women’s suffrage. This August, through a series of programs put on with the Los Angeles County Bar Association (LACBA) and the National Association of Women Judges (NAWJ), WLALA celebrated the Centennial of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. In these programs, we recognized and celebrated the efforts of heroic women who fought for, took and ultimately gained the right to vote for women. We also recognized that the right to vote did not extend to all women equally. During the Women’s Suffrage movement, Black women often had to march separately from White women in suffrage parades. Additionally, in writing the history of women’s suffrage, White suffragists rendered women of color, and their important and significant contributions to the fight for equality, invisible.

 

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