Texas Folklife is launching an online exhibition of quilts that celebrate some of the noted African American suffragists who contributed to the push for ratification of the 19th Amendment even though Black women remained disenfranchised until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“Access Delayed: African American Suffragists’ Courageous Influence on the 19th Amendment” goes live on Feb. 26 at texasfolklife.org/event/access-delayed-african-american-suffragists.
Featuring some 12 quilt artists from across Texas, the show is curated by quilters Tomasita Louviere-Ligons of Austin and Sharon Mooney from Pflugerville, both of whom have work included.
“Access Delayed” is an effort by the Quilt Friends Collective, a group of African American quilters from Texas, Ohio and Florida.
Say the curators in a statement: “Though African American women organized, fought and marched for the right to vote alongside the women attributed to the 19th Amendment, women like Susan Anthony, Elizabeth Stanton and Alice Paul, the accounts of influence and contribution of women like Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, Sojourner Truth were largely ignored and not credited in the written history of Women’s Suffrage. Currently, there are ongoing efforts to correct the record to include the contribution of African American suffragists. This exhibit is one such effort.”
