Your article is well written if simplistic. Issues of equality of race and equality of gender are intersectional but not always the same. They are complex and nuanced. The fight has always had to be strategic, it is long and ongoing, and is most successful when taking advantage of currents of change.

You neglect the long hard work for Universal Suffrage by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth C. Stanton. It didn’t work. Women were abandoned and the movement betrayed once the vote for black men had been achieved. (White) women, who had already been fighting for suffrage since before the signing of the Constitution) had already shifted suffrage focus to abolition of enslaved persons. After the 15th amendment, it would be 50 more years before women gained suffrage. 2 more generations would pass before the vote was won. Neither woman got to vote in their lifetime. It took massive female support of WWI to gain Presidential support for suffrage.

There’s another point. Before I make it let me just say, that I

know it’s semantics in a sense because the result is the same, but I think in another sense the distinction is incredibly important.

The 19th amendment did not exclude women of color. Here’s the language:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

It prevents exclusion from the vote based on sex. It did not end exclusion based on citizenship denial and Jim crow laws that had become entrenched well before 1920. Jim Crow laws did not exist in all states. J Crow laws depressed votes, but if you could meet the requirements (depending on how onerous they were) then the 19th amendment guaranteed you the right to vote. The first vote after the 19th included votes made by black women. Native Americans were not recognized as citizens and there was certainly racial prejudice there. I believe there was also internal disagreements within Native American nations over whether they wanted to be citizens during that time frame. So until that was resolved, it was lack of citizenship that prevented the vote. As you said, Asian Americans were excluded from citizenship as well — all Asian Americans, not just the female ones.

So, while exclusion of WOC absolutely happened, it was not because the 19th was only for white women. It was because of racial disenfranchisement already in place. The 19th was the beginning of the end of gender disenfranchisement. The first step, and the fight goes on. Nothing more, nothing less.

Why do I think the distinction is important? A milestone reached by one disenfranchised group (sex) should not be diminished because it did not address issues of another (race) any more than it would be appropriate to trash the 15th amendment and those who fought for it because it excluded women. There’s an internal misogyny and/or race bias there. No disenfranchised group can afford to undermine the steps forward of another. Or we all lose. Any step forward for any of us makes it that much easier for another group to take the next step on their journey. That should be celebrated and supported because any step gained can be stripped away. There’s a tug of war of wills here that is not going to end soon or easily. That is true across all groups fighting for their place in America. Sometimes I think there’s too much focus on dates. One step is not a journey complete, it’s just one step.

We do need to do better to honor and learn about the ones who’ve paved the way. We need to know their names, honor their memories, and continue their work. All of them in all their flaws as well as their triumphs. We need to be honest about who they were and where they erred, but not sully their memory or their work.