In 1927 the writer, educator, and activist Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson published an article titled “The Negro Woman and the Ballot” in the African American magazine The Messenger. In the article, she posed the question, “What have Black women done with their vote?” Dunbar-Nelson believed that Black women had not accomplished nearly enough since their enfranchisement in 1920. She encouraged them to start exercising their power as voters without bowing to pressure from their male peers or remaining loyal to the Republican Party, which at that time held the allegiance of most Black Americans. She noted that African American women had already demonstrated their power as a group in the congressional elections of 1922, in which their votes had helped oust Republican legislators in Delaware, New Jersey, and Michigan who had failed to support the anti-lynching legislation known as the Dyer Bill. Dunbar-Nelson noted that if Black women realized that their children’s futures could be helped or hindered by the way they voted, perhaps they would set aside allegiance to the Republican Party and use their ballot power to improve the condition of all African Americans.