“The Race is Doomed unless Negro Women Take an Active Part . . .”

Educator Nannie Helen Burroughs advocated for suffrage as an officer of the Woman’s Convention of the National Baptist Convention, a union of African American congregations supporting social reform. In 1915, she wrote that when women’s suffrage is passed, “the world is going to get a correct estimate of the Negro woman.” To help leverage their political power and safeguard their voting rights, she asked African American women to complete this questionnaire after the 1924 election when she was president of the National League of Republican Colored Women.