- Caitlin B.
- Friday, May 28, 2021
"For African American women, the fight for the right to vote was only one battle." -Evette Dionne
"Just as Sojourner Truth, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary McLeod Bethune, Fannie Lou Hamer, and so many others rose to the occasion, a new generation of suffragists are fighting to protect voting rights for Black people and people of color."
Evette Dionne’s Lifting as We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box is a middle-grade nonfiction book that walks the reader through the history of voting rights in the United States, focusing on the challenges faced by Black women. While many know that women gained the right to vote in 1920, what some may not know is that Black women were almost not included in the 19th Amendment. Indeed, Black women had to consistently and loudly remind White women suffragists that they too deserved a spot at the voting booth. Dionne sets the stage during the 1800s, when abolitionists, both Black and White, were working to end slavery. Brave formerly enslaved people including Sojourner Truth and Hetty Reckless joined forces with free women such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, to persuade White activists to include them in suffrage efforts.
Throughout the book, Dionne splashes in biographic information about notable Black suffragists. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary Church Terrell, and Mary McLeod Bethune are all featured, alongside Fannie Lou Hamer, whose songs inspired bus riders as they all traveled to register to vote, and Amelia Boynton Robinson, who marched from Selma to Montgomery on March 7, 1955, along with women whose names are less familiar: Fannie Barrier Williams, Nannie Helen Burroughs, and Dorothy Irene Height.
The book’s timeline spans over a century and ends by bringing the reader to the present with a vivid reminder that even today the right to vote is in jeopardy and that it is up to us to continue to “lift as we climb.”
If this book inspires you to learn more about brave Black women who helped secure the right to vote, take a look at these books, place books on hold online, or call the Children's Room at (803) 929-3434 for more recommendations.