I have the right to vote and I take advantage of that opportunity. I absolutely honor and appreciate all of the struggles others fought for over a century to give me that right. However, that is not necessarily the only driving force behind my determination to vote every time for every office in every election. I vote because I want to. I vote because I refuse to allow other people to make decisions on my behalf. I vote because I am an American citizen. I vote because I know that some people really hope I won’t. I vote because it gives me a sense of power in my own life.
It’s not lost on me that my great-grandmother, Ida B. Wells, was 58 years old when the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920 and women nationally gained the legal right to vote.The fact that she was a leader in the suffrage movement inspires me. She was a force when it came to Black women’s voices. According to her autobiography, Crusade for Justice, she was involved in multi-racial political organizations such as the Illinois Women’s Suffrage Association before she founded the all-Black Alpha Suffrage Club. She marched in the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., that she famously integrated. She also canvassed for Oscar De Priest, who became the first African-American alderman in Chicago, and was influential in gaining support for William Hale Thompson to win the 1915 mayoral race. And decades later, she was audacious enough to run for state senate in 1930, one year before she died.
Ida’s story is remarkable considering that she came of age during a time when Black people had few rights, on the cusp of the Civil War. In fact, she was considered property when she was born in Mississippi in 1862. She witnessed her father taking advantage of his right to vote as a result of the 15th Amendment in 1870 when Black men gained that right. But, then she was a firsthand witness to the backlash that slowly chipped away at the rights gained by formerly enslaved people.
Even though I was born a century after her, I’m still the first generation to have the right to vote without significant barriers. I came of age during the modern Civil Rights Movement when Black people in the South faced violence, unfair policies and intimidation in their quest to take advantage of a legal right. Local laws and race-based barriers kept them out of the voting booth. I grew up knowing that people fought and died to gain the right to vote, and was a toddler when the Voting Rights Act was signed in 1965. And I learned later in life the details about the racism and sexism my great-grandmother and other women of her generation faced in their struggle to gain voting rights.
Maybe the generations of struggle for the opportunity to vote makes casting my ballot an act of defiance for me. It’s a silent scream to make up for the multi-century effort to silence and keep Black people and women unempowered. The long effort to keep people like me voiceless in our government makes me more determined to participate. So, I vote. Luckily, it’s easier to do so now than ever before. We can vote in person several weeks before Election Day. We can vote by mail. We can vote in person on Election Day. It might take minutes or hours to vote, but I’d rather spend that time taking advantage of my right as a citizen than live with the reality that someone else made choices that affect me without my input. Even if my candidate doesn’t win, at least I made an effort to speak for myself.
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