Welcome to Axios today. I'm Nailaboodoo. It's Friday, September 4th. Last week

marked 100 years since the 19th Amendment officially became part of the US Constitution.

Many have rightly focused on the hard-won fight for that right to vote.

Yes, but...

Nothing in the 19th Amendment interferes with the ability of states,

particularly southern states, to keep black women from the polls.

And so for black women, the ability to vote wouldn't come for another 45 years.

And in that fight, there are women many of us are just now learning about.

And that's why we wanted to bring you a special episode about

black women's fight for the right to vote. Today we're talking about the hidden

figures of the suffragists movement and how their echoes influence black women's political reality today.

Martha Jones is an author, a historian, and a professor, and she focuses on how

black Americans have shaped American democracy. Her new book caught our eye

because it's about how black women broke barriers,

one and insisted on equality for all.

It's called Vanguard, and it comes out next Tuesday.

Dr. Jones, you undertook this massive exercise

of collecting histories of African-American women

in social and political movements starting from 1840.

Where did you find the examples of these women in their involvement?

A lot of our histories account in great detail what happens within women's suffrage associations,

and we know that there aren't a great number of African American women

...