The Deltas who marched for the right to vote in Washington in 1913 helped pave the way for African American women in politics.
The air was chilly, the trees still bare, yet the sky was clear and bright. March 3, 1913, was shaping up to be a perfect day for a grand and purposeful parade. Thousands of showily dressed suffragists had amassed in Washington from across the nation — indeed the world — to march along Pennsylvania Avenue on the eve of President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration.
Among them were the 22 young founders of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. at Howard University debuting as warriors for their race. There was Bertha Pitts Campbell, a vivacious young student who loved to dance but as valedictorian of her Colorado high school knew how to be serious, too. There was her sorority sister, Osceola Adams, a Georgia native with a dramatic flair who drew applause on the university stage. And marching nearby was Vashti Turley Murphy, a stylish graduate of D.C.
Black women viewed the vote as a means of protecting themselves against sexual exploitation. They also saw it as a way to boost education for African Americans by exerting influence on school boards and state legislatures. And as the great majority of Black women were employed, they believed enfranchisement could help secure their rights in the workforce.
Meanwhile, NAACP co-founder W.E.B. Du Bois praised the moral scrupulousness of Black women, who he believed would never sell their votes as some poor Black laborers had. “You cannot bribe a Negro woman,” Du Bois declared. In 1913, Ida B. Wells-Barnett founded the nonpartisan Alpha Suffrage Club in Illinois, which that year granted women limited voting rights. Wells-Barnett viewed enfranchisement and Black political representation as essential in passing a federal bill against lynching, which had surged since Black men won the vote. Wells-Barnett and other Black suffragists were encouraged in their activism by their White peers in Illinois — but that support had its limits.
They were urged on, according to some reports, by Mary Church Terrell, whose National Association of Colored Women was headquartered in D.C. In truth, the Deltas were also, like most of their peers, “frisky and boy-conscious” according toby Mary Elizabeth Vroman, and the prospect of leaving campus was clearly an added draw.
The Deltas and other African American marchers who overcame resistance and indignities “are to be congratulated that so many of them had the courage of their convictions,” Du Bois wrote in the April 1913 issue of the Crisis.
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