 Hello, my name is Francila Russo-Wilson and I am a professor of history, American studies in ethnicity and gender and sexuality studies at the University of Southern California. I was proud to be a part of the Historian's Advisory Committee for, rightfully hers, the National Archives exhibit on American women and the vote. Today I wanted to share just a few stories about black women who struggled for the vote from the suffrage period until today. The first person I want to talk about is Adela Hunt Logan. She was born free in Georgia during the Civil War and died in 1915 before women got the vote, but she was a part of the big suffrage effort of the National Association of Color Women and black women throughout history have fought for both suffrage and the freedom of all black people from racial terror and Jim Crow laws. Another person during the early period was Ida B. Wells-Bornette. Wells-Bornette was an activist journalist who campaigned internationally against lynching and in 1913 when there was a national parade of suffragists in Washington, D.C., the organizers told Wells who was internationally famous to walk in the back with other black women and Wells insisted on walking with the Illinois delegation, which was her home delegation. Women were able to vote in 1920 and black women in Florida and many other southern states did register, but they soon found that they were denied the right to vote along with black men, sometimes violently as in Florida where school founder Mary McLeod Bethune led voter registration drives in 1920. Another important person that's very little known is Septima Clark. She was a South Carolina school teacher who lost her job because she created citizenship schools which helped South Carolinians register to vote. Another interesting thing about Mrs. Clark is that she led social justice campaigns that were attended by Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks before the Montgomery bus boycott, so her efforts for both voting and social justice should be remembered and are not very much. Here in Southern California, Carlotta Bass became one of the first black women to own a newspaper in 1915 and in 1952 she became the first black woman to run for vice president of the United States on the progressive ticket and she remained an activist and joined the Sojourners for Truth movement that fought against racial violence in the South. These are just some of the many black women that fought for the right to vote up through the Voting Rights Act and beyond. Thank you.