Black Women and Girls and the Twenty-sixth Amendment: Constitutional Connections, Activist Intersections, and the First Wave Youth Suffrage Movement

On this 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment—and on the cusp of the fiftieth anniversary of the Twenty-sixth Amendment—this article seeks to expand the voting rights canon. It complicates our understanding of voting rights history in the United States, adding layers to the history of federal constitutional enfranchisement and encouraging a more intersectional telling of our suffrage story in the days ahead. Thus, this work not only seeks to acknowledge the Twenty-sixth Amendment as important constitutional content, as was the goal of the article I wrote with my law student colleagues for a conference held at the University of Akron School of Law last year; it also expands upon the historical sections in that work to draw connections among different civil rights movements and move beyond the limited dualistic narratives that have been offered to date regarding suffrage in this country. Although there is much more to learn and tell, this Article advances the important ongoing project of lifting up and celebrating the multilayered identities and contributions of Black women and girls who impacted United States youth enfranchisement—including Diane Nash, Carolyn Quilloin, and Philomena Queen.