Prominent Women of Color in the California Suffrage Movement
While California has a rich history of spearheading progressive movements, our history books typically pay little attention to movement leaders who are not Anglo-white women, and that is especially true of women’s suffrage. There are so many more women behind the movement who were important change agents and not the more recognized white names like Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The Centennial of the 19th amendment should serve as a time to reflect on the women who did not make the history books.
The history that led to universal women’s suffrage is a much longer and more racially diverse arc than what is typically remembered. And the fight still continues today, as voting disenfranchisement is disguised in more covert ways. We must continue to propel all women forward, with a deliberately interracial, intersectional focus. Here’s to the women of color movement shakers in California who dedicated themselves to justice and equality.
Naomi Anderson
Anderson was a Black suffragist, civil rights activist, writer and lecturer who advocated for equal rights for all genders starting in the 1860s. Anderson worked as a volunteer with the International Organization of Grand Templars in Chicago and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. At the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in Chicago 1869, Anderson said,
“Woman has a power within herself, and the God that reigns above, who furnished Abraham Lincoln with knowledge to write the Emancipation Proclamation whereby four million Blacks were set free — that God, our God, is with and for us, and will hear the call of woman, and our rights will be granted, and she shall be permitted to vote.”
To make this a reality, Anderson lectured and campaigned across the country with other suffragists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
In 1895, Anderson moved to California to bring her campaign for universal voting rights to the West. While the struggle for equality took much longer for women like Anderson to obtain, she fought her whole life for intersectional freedom and equity.
Maria Guadalupe Evangelina de Lopez
Lopez was President of the College Equal Suffrage League and a Los Angeles high school teacher, and also served as a Spanish translator for the suffrage movement. She translated many suffrage flyers, authored by the Political Equality League, to make the message more accessible to Spanish speakers. In 1902, she was the first Latinx woman to teach at the University of Los Angeles, making her the youngest professor at the time.
In addition to heading the College Equal Suffrage League, Lopez was also a member of the Los Angeles Votes for Women Club and successfully campaigned for suffrage in 1911. She believed that the support of Latinx voters was essential and imperative for inclusivity. Tens of thousands of Spanish-language pamphlets were distributed across Southern California in 1911 as a part of a campaign for women’s voting rights. Lopez is noted as the first person in the U.S. to make a speech about women’s suffrage in Spanish. Additionally, she later served as an ambulance driver during World War I.
Myra Virginia Simmons
Simmons was a prominent community organizer in the Bay Area who chaired many coalitions that promoted the suffrage movement. She was the president of the Colored American Equal Suffrage League (CAESL) and chair of the Women’s Civic and Progressive League in Oakland. Simmons was a keynote speaker for suffragists of color at the North Oakland Baptist Church. On Election Day, October 10, 1911, she served as a precinct captain in an Alameda County district represented by Black women. In November 1911, she was the subject of a San Francisco Call article titled, “New Organization Outgrowth of Suffrage League.”
After the 19th amendment was accepted, Simmons rebranded the Colored Equal Suffrage League into a club that served to educate Black women on voting processes and politics. The club members also organized and denounced segregation in schools and campaigned for Black officials in Congress. According to the 1912 California Voter Registrations (California State Library), Simmons was a registered Socialist. In 1912, she also participated as a representative for the Alameda County Colored Americans at the California Civic League. She continued her work as the Chair of Alameda County Day Committee and was a club chair for the Civic Center: Women’s Civic and Progressive League in Oakland.
Charlotta Bass
Bass was a revolutionary Black activist who advocated for labor rights, racial justice, housing rights, and police reform in her California Eagle newspaper and, later, as a Vice Presidential candidate for the Progressive Party. In 1910, Bass took over one of the oldest Black-owned newspapers in the U.S., The Owl, and rebranded it as The California Eagle.
Her newspaper served as a platform for articles focusing on suffrage, advocacy, civil liberties, and injustice. During the height of McCarthyism, the FBI investigated Bass and she was labeled a Communist. She also founded the National Sojourner for Truth and Justice Club, which she created to support Black women and was involved in many political circles with a comprehensive understanding of the spectrum of Black politics. While working with socialist groups, Bass also served as a chapter president for the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which engaged with more moderate members of the NAACP. In 1952, she ran as Vice President for the Progressive Party with the slogan, “Win or lose, we win by raising the issues,” which helped pave the way for other marginalized women to hold positions of power.
Tye Leung Schulze
Schulze was the first Chinese-American woman, in history to “exercise the electoral franchise,” according to the San Francisco Call. She also became the first Chinese woman employed by the federal government once she passed her civil service exam. Schulze worked as a translator for detained Chinese immigrants at the Angel Island Detention Center in San Francisco. While working on the island, she met Charles Schulze, who became her husband until his early death in 1935.
Despite the 1913 anti-miscegenation laws which banned interracial marriage between whites and Asians, the Schulzes went to Washington state where it was legal. After her husband’s death, she became a beloved community organizer and kept various jobs while raising her children alone. Later in Schulze’s life, she was arrested for allegedly taking women to abortion clinics, but charges were dropped.
Selina Solomons
Solomons, a Sephardic Jewish Suffragette, devoted her life to the Suffrage Movement and was a critical organizer and mobilizer. She organized shop girls in San Francisco to win the vote for women - a full decade before the ratification of the 19th amendment. Solomon’s suffragette saloon, “Votes for Women Club,” in February 1910 was a popular spot for working women to organize with a good supply of suffragette literature at the women’s disposal. In response to the ratification of the 19th amendment in California, Solomon said,
“We had kept back our womanish tears. Now we gave free rein to our emotions in both manly and womanly fashion, with handshaking and back-slapping as well as hugging and kissing one another. October 10, 1911 proved to be the greatest day in my life.”
Just a year after ratification, Selina Solomons published, “How We Won the Vote in California: A true story of the campaign of 1911.”
All women’s right to participate equally in the political process, whether as a citizen, a voter, or a candidate, is still relatively new, and we must continue to propel all women forward, with a deliberately interracial, intersectional focus.
Interested in more history from the women’s suffrage movement? Visit our interactive timeline on the history of women’s right to vote.
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Close the Gap California (CTGCA) is a statewide campaign launched in 2013 to close the gender gap in the California Legislature by 2028. By recruiting accomplished, progressive women in targeted districts and preparing them to launch competitive campaigns, CTGCA is changing the face of the Legislature one cycle at a time.
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