S01 E03 Alabama Part 2: Defying Shackles and Strides in the March for Equality

In the second of two episodes on Alabama, Dr. Alex Colvin, Public Programs Curator at the Alabama Department of Archives and History, talks about the struggle for voting rights in the decades after 1920.

We talk about the events and foot soldiers in AL voting rights campaigns after 1920:

• Hattie Hooker Wilkins of Selma was the first woman to be elected to serve in the state legislature.
• Mrs. Indiana Little led a group of African Americans to register to vote in 1926 in Birmingham. They were all denied by the registrar, and Indiana Little was arrested.
• Amelia Boynton Robinson was a central figure in the voting rights movement and in 1958, she testified in front of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in Montgomery, outlining the ways Black citizens were disenfranchised through legal and extralegal means.
• Betty Anderson was 15 when she marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 and kept going even though she had worn holes in her Converse sneakers.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Dr. Alex Colvin is the Public Programs Curator at Alabama Department of Archives and History and the State Coordinator for the National Votes for Women Trail. She has a PhD in early American history with a focus on Creek history at the turn of the 19th Century.

Links to People, Places, Publications

• Alabama and the 19th Amendment (here)
• Suffrage–The Alabama Story (here)
• How Women Got the Vote in Alabama (here)
• Hattie Hooker Wilkins Biographical Sketch (here)
• Indiana T. Little Biographical Sketch (here)
• The Birmingham Reporter, Jan. 23, 1926, article on Mrs. Little (here)
• “’I Will Not Move’: The Story of Alabama Suffragist Indiana Little” video (here)
• Selma to Montgomery March, 1965 (here)
• Virtual tour of “Justice Not Favor” exhibit with Betty Anderson sneaker (here)

CM Marihugh is a public history consultant and currently conducting independent research for a book on commemoration of the U.S. women’s suffrage movement. She has an M.A. in Public History from State University of New York, and an M.B.A. from Dartmouth College.

Learn more about:

• National Votes for Women Trail (here)
• National Votes for Women Trail - William G. Pomeroy historical markers (here)
• National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites (here)

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