Black men were given the right to vote in 1870. In the City of Napa, April 10th, 1870, a large gathering at the County Courthouse witnessed a one hundred gun salute and local African American businessman, Frederick Sparrow, registered to vote bn his first election.
African American Suffragists key to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment giving the vote to all women.
Freedom's Daughters by 
And Not Afraid to Dare by
February is Black History Month
The McCarthy Library invites you to join us in exploring, celebrating and for some remembering African Americans hard fought battle for the most basic of civil rights - voting.
The founders of Black History Month, the Association for the Study of African Life and History (ASALH), has designated African American and the Vote to be the theme for 2020. The year 2020 is the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment (1920)and the culmination of the women’s suffrage movement and also marks the sesquicentennial of the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) giving the right of black men to the ballot after the Civil War. The theme speaks, therefore, to the ongoing struggle on the part of both black men and black women for the right to vote. The fight for female suffrage was hard fought by black women fighting against racial and gender discrimination along side white women and culminated with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Efforts to disenfranchise black voters persisted though Jim Crow legislation that allowed poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation and "grandfather clauses" along with other tactics. The struggle for Civil Rights by activist leaders and citizens culminated in the Voters Right Act of 1965, a landmark piece of federal legislation that prohibits racial discrimination in voting that is considered by the Department of Justice to be the most effective civil rights legislation ever signed into law.
Today, citizens over the age of 18 cannot be denied the right to vote, regardless of race, religion, sex, disability, or sexual orientation. Despite legal victories the challenges of voters suppression still exists and it is incumbent upon us all to protect this right and vote!
March 3, 2020 is the California Presidential Primary Election.
Rock the Vote information:https://www.rockthevote.org/voting-information/election-dates-deadlines/california/
Voter Registration forms are available at the McCarthy Library
Are you registered to vote? Check your Voter registration status :https://voterstatus.sos.ca.gov/
Dark Days, Bright Nights by Although Stephanie has retired, her work still lives on with her LibGuides.
President Johnson's Special Message to the Congress: The American Promise
Our fathers believed that if this noble view of the rights of man was to flourish, it must be rooted in democracy. The most basic right of all was the right to choose your own leaders. The history of this country, in large measure, is the history of the expansion of that right to all of our people... Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right.Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men and women are kept from voting because the are Negro.
