Making her role count

HEN AMERICANS ELECTED KAMALA HARRIS Vice President, they symbolically completed a 150-year project of recognizing the right of Black people to exercise the full franchise as citizens. In 1870, the 15th Amendment gave African-American men the right to vote. In 1920, the 19th Amendment secured the franchise for women. We commemorated both of these milestones this year, even as scholars acknowledged the ways African-American women were overlooked and, because of extreme racial repression, did not get to vote in significant numbers until the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. We also marked the battle to expand the franchise under the shadow of a massive voter-suppression campaign undertaken by conservative politicians and the current President. Stacey Abrams’