Because the national movement placed expediency above race relations, they often neglected African American supporters. Ultimately, the black woman’s suffrage movement existed primarily as a parallel movement rather than a contribution to the dominant white woman’s suffrage movement. While, leaders of the black woman’s
suffrage movement developed their own organizations, they were often excluded from public spectacles and are decidedly absent from suffrage media like cartoons for The Suffragist (NWP) and The Woman Citizen (NAWSA). Although African American publications like The Crisis, the official organ of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) continually advocated on behalf of woman suffragists.

Mary Church Terrell, the most prominent leader of the African American woman’s suffrage movement, was one of the nation’s first black women to earn a degree. She helped form The National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1894 and served as its leader leader. ^[1] Though she regularly campaigned for woman’s suffrage, speaking at NAWSA’s national convention in 1898 and again in 1900, she was highly critical of white suffragists, particularly in the twentieth century as women like Alice Paul began to alienate black women as an appeal to racist white male voters. Church argued, in her 1912 article for The Crisis:

Church continued her support for equality between the sexes and among races for the rest of her life. In her autobiography Church explained her pride in supporting suffrage by saying, “it gives me satisfaction to know
that I was on the right side of the question when it was most unpopular to advocate it.”^[3] Despite all the work that Terrell did for woman’s suffrage her contributions are largely ignored because her activities, particularly after the rise of the NWP in 1913, were marginalized on account of her race.