Honoring black suffragists means first acknowledging how they were sidelined from the mainstream suffrage movement, whose leaders feared alienating white women and losing support in the South.  

That exclusion spurred the formation of separate organizations such as the National Association of Colored Women, founded in 1896 in the nation's capital. Prominent black suffragists such as Mary Church Terrell, who was born to former slaves in 1864, led the group and also went on to help found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909 in New York City.

Leaders like Terrell “didn't ask for a place in the suffrage movement. They took their place in the movement in a variety of ways,” says Jinx Broussard, a professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and author of Giving a Voice to the Voiceless: Four Pioneering Black Women Journalists. “Tenacious is not a strong enough word for them.”

https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-2020/black-women-voti...