Washington Needs the Vote

Abstract

This chapter explores how, during the 1930s, black women waged an early civil rights movement in the nation’s capital. Inspired by the militancy of the Great Depression and influenced by on-going campaigns for safety and economic justice, activists protested racial segregation, lobbied for the passage of a civil rights bill, and pressed for the restoration of voting rights to all eligible residents of Washington, D.C., culminating in a referendum election in 1938. While African Americans waged similar types of movements around the country, activists in Washington, D.C. benefited from their close proximity to the federal government. As memories of the Civil War and Reconstruction surfaced in the 1930s, activists applied the lessons from these eras directly into their political campaigns as they worked to restore the freedoms that their ancestors had once enjoyed in Washington, D.C.