By , Archita Gaur, 2025/2026 Power in Place Research Collaborator, 2025/2026 Power in Place Research Collaborator
Helen Augusta Howard wore pants in 1890s Georgia. She declared herself an atheist in the deeply religious South. She refused marriage, cut her hair short, and founded the Georgia Woman Suffrage Association at age 25. For these acts of defiance, she paid dearly: ostracized by her community, financially cut off by her brothers, and eventually driven from Georgia entirely. Her gravestone reads "MARTYRED." Howard's courage was real and her sacrifices were significant. But her story also reveals an uncomfortable truth. The cost of defiance has never been equal, and neither has the freedom to defy. When Howard wore pants and shorter skirts, she was called scandalous and unladylike. When she rejected traditional femininity, she embarrassed her prominent family. However, she could reject these norms because she had the racial privilege to do so without facing violence. Her behavior challenged gender expectations but it never threatened white supremacy. Meanwhile, Black women in Georgia were organizing their own suffrage efforts through the National Federation of Colored Women's Clubs. Leaders like Lugenia Burns Hope and Lucy Laney fought for voting rights while navigating a world where any perceived defiance of racial hierarchy could mean death. They couldn't afford to be "unladylike" in the ways Howard was. Their resistance had to be strategic, coded, and constantly aware of the violence that policed Black women's behavior in ways white women never experienced. When the 19th Amendment passed in 1920, white Georgia women voted statewide by 1922. Howard's exclusion was temporary. Her suffrage was eventually won. Black women in Georgia faced decades more of Jim Crow: literacy tests designed to fail them, poll taxes they couldn't afford, and the threat of violence at polling places. The cost of defiance isn't equal because the systems of power aren't equal. Gender oppression is real. But it's amplified, complicated, and made more dangerous by race, class, sexuality, and even citizenship status. Helen Howard was brave. She sacrificed. She paved roads others would walk. She challenged the men who silenced her but not the racial hierarchy that protected her even as it crushed others. Her story matters precisely because it's incomplete. It reminds us that defiance without solidarity is partial liberation. That true freedom requires dismantling all hierarchies not just the ones that limit us personally. That's the unfinished work. And it's ours to complete.
References
https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1010026835 https://www.historiccolumbus.com/post/augusta-howard-and-the-women-s-suffrage-marker-dedication https://theclio.com/entry/165969 https://suffragistmemorial.org/suffragists-in-georgia/ https://www.nps.gov/articles/georgia-and-the-19th-amendment.htm
Archita Gaur is a junior at the University of Georgia majoring in Political Science and Economics. On campus, Archita is involved with Mock Trial, the Arch Policy Institute and the AI Society at Terry. She also serves as a Frye Fellow at the Georgia House of Representatives.