Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/988313
Heritage Matters 31 movement focused on securing the vote for white women and was not inclusive of agitating for the voting rights of racialized women – Black, Indigenous and Asian women. At least three members of the celebrated members of the Famous Five – Nellie McClung, Emily Murphy, Irene Parlby, Henrietta Muir Edwards and Louise McKinney – early champions of female suffrage and rights, held views of racialized peoples including Blacks, Indigenous, Chinese and Jews as being socially inferior. The Wartime Elections Act of 1917 granted the federal franchise to the female relatives of men in serving the military (army or navy, active or retired). This law extended the right to vote to Black women related to men serving in the No. 2 Construction Battalion (the segregated all-Black labour unit in which over 600 men served from across Canada) and to the female relatives of Black men who were able to enlist in regular regiments. Over time, Black women became more involved in the political process and community organizations run by Black women added voter engagement to their mandate. At a 1924 meeting held by the Women's Home and Foreign Mission Society of the Baptist churches in Windsor, the group asserted that, "We as Christian women will use our influence in this next election to keep the Ontario Temperance Act in force." The right to vote and participate in the political process has been important to Black women and men in Canada throughout Canadian history. After over 200 years of enslavement and despite the continued anti-Black racism that they experienced, Black Canadians firmly believed that voting affirmed their status as British subjects and later as Canadian citizens; it enabled them to assert their political voices. Black women have pushed the margins against the social constraints imposed on them and have inserted themselves in political spaces from which they were once excluded. The political engagement and activism of Black women in Canada has been and continues to be shaped by their experiences of gender and race. Natasha Henry is the president of the Ontario Black History Society. She is a historian, educator and curriculum consultant. F 2076-16-3-2/Unidentified woman and her son, [ca. 1900], Alvin D. McCurdy fonds, Archives of Ontario, I0027790.