When thousands of women dressed in white marched down Washington D.C.’s Pennsylvania Avenue on March 3, 1913, their Suffragist rallying cry for equality was loud and clear, “Votes for Women.” While the 15th Amendment in 1870 gave Black men the right to vote, women, specifically White women, waited 50 more years for the same opportunity to cast their ballots. Most Black women in the U.S. would continue to fight decades for voting equity. While the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote, Black women still had to contend with poll taxes and literacy tests that kept them and others in their families from exercising their right to vote in many states.

As Dr. D-L Stewart says in his seminal work, Language of Appeasement, our goal should be “…to make equity and justice the yardstick by which leaders measure progress…”

Journalist Tabbye Chavous expounds on the equity of the American vote when she writes, “Given the documented successes of the [Voting Rights Amendment], it is all the more troubling that the Supreme Court, in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) sharply limited the scope of the VRA, dismantling critical elements that had increased voting participation. This court decision also spurred the enactment of long-stalled state-level policies designed to suppress voter turnout and disenfranchise minoritized populations across the nation.”

So did the Voting Rights Act provide an equitable opportunity for all voters, or are Americans operating under the false pretense that equality and equity are the same?