Black Women’s Suffrage: A Review

Reviewed by: Yesenny Fernandez

Review started: March 30, 2022

Review finished: 04/06/2022

Site Link: https://blackwomenssuffrage.dp.la/

Data and Sources

Online data collection of the Black Women’s Suffrage between the 1850s and 1960.

• The site combines archival materials from the Digital Library of America (DPLA) network of over 4,000 institutions.
• They used information on the history of American women from Womenhistoryblog and from PBS: The Forten Women.
• Research on female key figures from the Abolitionists movement, women’s rights, voting rights, and civic activism.
• Collection of correspondence, facsimiles, photographs, writings, transcriptions, minutes and agendas, manuscripts, autobiographies, diaries, copies of articles, speeches, newspaper clippings, and many other collected materials documenting Black Women’s Suffrage.

Languages

• English

Digital Tools Used to Build It

Next.js, Amazon CloudFront, Cloudflare JS, CDN JS, JavaScript, CSS, Google-analytics.com, gstatic. The site also uses “Exhibit” WordPress Theme, Apple whitelist, MailChimp, Crowdcast, iPhone/ Mobile Compatible.

• Email Hosting Providers: Zendesk, Microsoft Exchange Online, SPF, Google Apps for Business, Office 365 Mail
• Name Server: Amazon Route 53
• Web Server: nginx
• Operating Systems/ servers: Ubuntu, RSS, Really Simple Discovery
• Audio/ Video Media: Zoom, Youtube, Anarchy Media Player
• Payment: Stripe

Processes

• Tributes to Black women with their biographies
• Collection that links women’s suffrage and other social causes
• History from museums, libraries, archives, and many other institutions across the nation.
• All the collections are linked to the institution where the material was retrieved from.
• Thousands of information such as videos, photographs, texts, old prints, sounds, physical objects, and many others were linked to the site from their original publisher institution and provided with rich metadata.

Presentation:

• A website to collect information on Black Women’s Suffrage and other related movements.
• The website includes information from DPLA collection, and it includes machine generation and human oversight.
• Links to each of the institutions where they obtained the original work.
• The website has an about page with their preferred highlighted key figures, a credit section, a page with a timeline of the journey to Black women’s suffrage, a key figures page, a collection page featuring primary source sets, and a partner’s page including their partners.

Review

The Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection is a project providing digital access to work documenting the lives and experiences of Black Women in the Women’s Suffrage Movement and in other related events between the 1850s and 1960 such as women’s rights, voting rights, and civic activism.

The first impression this site gave me was a very good use of color combinations. Purple is known for its use on sites such as the International Women's Day (IWD) website, and most domestic violence websites as well. Purple is known for being a symbol of the Feminist Movement as it signifies justice and dignity. But the logo is well designed too because they named it as the name of the site but in addition, it has the words “DPLA” which is the website from where the creators obtained most of the work being presented on the website. They integrated headers with shapes which in my opinion this design look cleaner than when a website adds images in its headers.

A designated page to state how the material in the collection could potentially be harmful because of its language. This is very helpful for the sensitive content being displayed on the site and right under the statement, there is a frequently asked question section giving users the opportunity to self-answer any questions they might have.

The project aims at telling the story of Black women’s suffrage, one artifact at a time is a very good approach, for instance when I click on one of the featured collections such as Claire Collins Harvey I can see a collection of typescripts, newsletter, letters, and other correspondences with Claire’s name on it. Claire was “a church leader and businesswoman in Mississippi, who was active in civil rights, the women's movement, and the international peace movement.” Her collection was digitized and uploaded instead of just providing links to their original source. However, when the user clicks on one of these, there is metadata for each item which includes title, creator, date created, description, subject, type, rights, publisher, and the language of the work. This is very important as it ensures that we will know the history behind each item and allows us to preserve and reuse it in the future. In addition, this collection reminds me of the work done by The Visual Agency; they created an interactive visualization called The Codex Atlanticus which opens up new ways of exploring the evolution of Leonardo Da Vinci's writings and drawings. This is what the Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection is also trying to do, allowing users to see all the work related to the struggles of Black Women’s Suffrage and other similar events in just one digital space.

After reading “Sassy Mouths, Unfettered Spirits, and the Neo-Lynching of Korryn Gaines and Sandra Bland” by Zoe Spencer and Olivia N. Perlow I realized how the Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection is necessary because many might not know of the struggles that Black women had to go through for them to get basic human rights. “Historically Black women were commonly criminalized and lynched for the offense of resisting by those who sought to uphold the racial and gender status quo and caste etiquette, which included the audacity of Black women asserting their rights to protect their children and defend themselves against sexual violence,” (167). Nevertheless, it is extremely necessary and useful to have this space where to learn about the movements, the speeches these women did, the marches where many of them were lynched in the mobs just because they challenged white supremacy, “argued with a white man,” “demanded respect,” “frightened a white woman,” “'sued white man,” or “tried to vote.”

Potential Improvements:

In the partners' page section, there is a section with a zoom recording but unfortunately, it is no longer available and if clicked an error occurs.

What could go wrong with this collection?

If the original publishers delete the original materials, then that means that the work won’t be visible in the Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection.