“Discovering New York Suffrage Stories,” a documentary that premiered this month on WNED/PBS, features numerous contributions from Lillian Williams, associate professor of Africana and American studies.

In the film, Williams provides insight on the history of the women’s rights movement and suffragists in New York State, including Mary Burnett Talbert, a Buffalo-based human rights activist whose life and work Williams has researched extensively. The website promoting the project includes extra content, such as a panel discussion on the intersection of women’s voting rights and the fight for racial equality, and an interview in which Williams discusses her father and events that inspired her to become a historian, activist and educator.  

Williams recalls that in elementary school, she brought one of her father’s books on Black history to class. “It talked about Africa. It talked about kings and queens and scientists. You know, things that this little first-grader had never heard of before.”

As Williams recounts, “I got a response from my teacher that said, ‘Your father’s books are a pack of lies. Don’t bring them to class to share anymore. Africans never did anything. In fact, Africa was a dark continent.’”

That memory has stayed with Williams, and it motivated her to teach and study Black history throughout her career. In the new documentary, Williams and other experts discuss the multifaceted challenges that Black women faced in the fight for suffrage. Williams notes the battle did not end with the passage of the 19th Amendment, which in theory granted women the right to vote across the United States, but in practice did not dismantle many barriers preventing people of color from voting.

“The fact of the matter is, with the enactment of the legislation, life did not change dramatically for African Americans,” Williams says. “They still had to fight for the vote.”