The 19th Amendment did not secure equal suffrage in the United States. To garner support
from Southern states, Alice Paul, leader of the National Woman’s Party and one of the key
suffragists credited in securing the passage of the 19th Amendment, emphasized that Southern
states could use the same tactics they already used to suppress Black men’s votes to similarly
suppress Black women. Black people were also not the only group denied the right to vote.
Indigenous people, those of Chinese, Japanese, and Indian descent, and other racial and
religious minorities were denied citizenship, preventing them from voting.

Though Black men and women were able to vote in Indiana and many of them did, they were
still threatened with day-to-day violence and discrimination from racist ideologies, growing
support of the Ku Klux Klan, and segregation policies held by many cities, schools, and
universities, including Purdue.

Before coming to Purdue University as a professor, Helen Bass Williams was an educator
and civil rights activist in the South where she helped disenfranchised African Americans
register to vote.

During her time in South Carolina, Williams recruited Black students to voter registration
workshops and trainings, driving over 200 miles under the threat of dismissal or arrest if
caught. In Mississippi, she drove to various counties to help Black residents safely register
to vote and get to polling stations that were sometimes moved multiple times a day to
suppress Black voters.

After decades of work by civil rights activists, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting
Rights Act into law in 1965. This act aimed to protect voter registration and voting rights
for racial minorities.

Even with this law, voting suppression tactics persist. Voter registration restrictions,
identification laws, limitations of early voting opportunities, and inadequate polling
stations continue to be employed across the United States, including in Indiana, and
predominantly affect minority communities.