In the fall of 1916, four years before the 19th Amendment would make it unconstitutional to deny voting rights on the basis of sex, African-American women in Chicago were readying to cast their first ballots ever for President. The scenes in that year of black women, many of them the daughters and granddaughters of former slaves, exercising the franchise, was as ordinary as it was unexpected.

Theirs was a unique brand of politics crafted at the crossroads of racism and sexism. African-American women had always made their own way. In Chicago, they secured a place at the polls by way of newly enacted state laws that, over 25 years, extended the vote to the women of Illinois, gradually, unevenly and without regard to color. The real story, however, is an older one that stretches across generations of black women’s ambition and activism. It only sometimes intersects with better-known tales of how white women campaigned for their political rights. And yes, sometimes black and white women clashed. Still, the history of black women and the vote is one about figures who, though subjected to nearly crushing political disabilities, emerged as unparalleled advocates of universal suffrage in its truest sense.

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By the dawn of the 20th century, black women had arrived. And to understand how in Chicago they came to vote in 1916 requires understanding of what occurred in their churches and women’s clubs. Black women had always strived to enhance their power. And perhaps after voting and holding office in churches, doing the same in the realm of party politics was an obvious next step. What is certain is how through their clubs and their churches, black women then became party activists: rallying, marching, vetting candidates, electioneering, voting and even running for local office.

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Their success had only begun in 1916. And it would continue well beyond 1920 and the addition of the 19th amendment to the Constitution. In much of the country, racism continued to block black women’s political aspirations, as it had always done. At the start of the 20th century, it was not yet possible to see clearly the modern civil rights movement that lay ahead. Chapters were yet to be written, ones that included figures like Mississippi’s voting rights champion Fannie Lou Hamer, and landmark legislation such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Also on the horizon was Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to be elected to Congress, and then run for President.

Though they likely dreamed of her—a daughter of Chicago and an heir to those black women voters of 1916—Michelle Obama defied any script as she wrote her chapter in the history of black women and political power. And if the past might not have anticipated her, she certainly drew upon it when she stepped to the podium at the August 2008 Democratic National Convention, and explained how history had shaped her: “This week we celebrate two anniversaries. The 88th anniversary of women winning the right to vote and the 45th anniversary of that hot summer day when Dr. King lifted our sights and our hearts with his dream for our nation.” Mrs. Obama claimed two histories: that of gender—as represented by the passage of the 19th Amendment, and that of race—as expressed through the Civil Rights movement: “I stand here today at the crosscurrents of that history, knowing that my piece of the American dream is a blessing hard won by those who came before me.” In Obama’s 21st-century view of American political culture, she drew insight from her position as a daughter of both Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. She embodied the legacies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer. Race and sex, in her analysis, were not only a fraught dyad or a burden to be borne, they were also core facets of black women’s political identities, and the starting place for any quest for rights.