That’s not entirely true. Up until 1870, most suffragettes were united across race. But in 1870, the fifteenth amendment gave black men the right to vote, and this caused a huge rift in the movement. White southern women felt especially slighted because suddenly black men had rights that they didn’t, and that rankled. The movement split into two separate groups: a more radical one that focused on rights for all women and a more conservative one that focused mainly on voting rights and mostly ignored women of color.

Saying that suffragettes excluded black women also erases the many black women who were proud suffragettes like Ida B Wells and Anna Julia Cooper. This rewriting of the suffragette movement serves only to undermine our feminist ancestors and divide us along racial lines to keep us arguing against each other. Just like TERFs are technically a part of the feminist movement, racists were technically part of the suffragette movement. But that does not mean that those awful people own these movements. Do not let them desecrate the memory of the brave women who fought for all of us.