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Among the differences she found in her research was that Delaware’s
white and African American suffragists occasionally met together.
Delaware was a segregated state, and the white pro-suffrage activists
generally tried to distance themselves from discussing the issue of
Black voting rights, so the cross-racial meetings were a surprise,
Boylan said. And, she said, Black suffragists were critically important
in the struggle.
“I knew they were very well organized, but I think even I was a
little surprised at how organized they were,” she said. “In this book, I
especially wanted to feature the African American women because many of
their stories have never been told, or even acknowledged.”
Unlike the segregated states of the South, Delaware’s 1897
constitution had eliminated the poll tax and other impediments to
voting, and Black men in the state had been active voters and elected to
office in Wilmington. So, Boylan said, “Everyone knew that expanding
the suffrage in Delaware would include Black women.”
After ratification, women in Delaware voted not as a bloc but for
different parties and in support of various issues, Boylan said.
But
Black women, she writes, “registered and voted enthusiastically for
Republican candidates.” They also wielded enough voting power to take on
the state’s Republican congressman when he failed to support an
anti-lynching bill; breaking their usually unified support for
Republicans, Black women saw that he was defeated for re-election in
1922.