African American women gathered and united for the ratification of a promise, of an amendment. Collectively and individually, they each developed the appropriate strategies to increase and further develop their vote (Penn 97). From this quote, the independent clubs included formed churches in different neighborhoods to help individual communities. While others joined national organizations such as BWC and NACW, which were the Baptist Women's Convention and the National Association for Colored Women. Often, through state alliances, younger African American women started clandestine societies such as sororities. They also formed the women's supplementary reserves of the Masonic orders, which are members of a worldwide society, also known as Free and Accepted Masons, best known for its charitable work and secret rites, in this case women's suffrage. Furthermore, according to Dennis Parker, honoring African Americans and women is sometimes criticized as an ineffective way to counteract the tendency to marginalize the vital roles of blacks and women in shaping American culture. During the women's suffrage era, black women who lead the contradictory anti-women's suffrage influences advanced in such ways that white men and women responded as incredulous and would not be able to achieve their goals. In 1910, in fifteen Southern states alone, there were 4.4 million black women of voting age, compared to 10.6 million white women of voting age (Penn 108). This statement is completely unsurprising compared to what many would fear about being black female voters in politics in the United States. The population of African American female voters of...... middle of paper...... numbers. Baker mentored Parks and other civil rights activists such as Bob Mosses and Diane Nash (Sourabh Gupta). Parks refused her seat to a white man because she was tired of giving up physically and mentally. According to The Average Joes conference, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested for the first time for breaking the law that Rosa Parks broke for the second time. “My head was just too full of black history, you know, the oppression that we went through (Margot Adler). She was mostly the first to really challenge the law. Colvin the latter moved to New York to support the movement for civil rights with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Colvin did not become an icon like Rosa Parks because she was a student and was not part of the civil rights movement at the time Rosa Parks made her decision fourteen months later and she became the principal secretary of the NAACP.