February 26, 2014 • 45 mins
The history of the women's movement for suffrage was written by white women and largely overshadows the African-American feminists who worked alongside them, battling not only gender inequity but also racism, disenfranchisement and segregation from mainstream suffrage organizations. Cristen and Caroline highlight Ida B. Wells and other black women integral to winning the vote for all American women.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff Mob Never Told You from House Supports
dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline and Caroline. This episode highlighting Black women
of the suffrage movement is really appropriate timing wise because
(00:25):
it's coming out the last week of February, so the
last week of Black History Month, leading us into Women's
History Month. So in my mind, this episode is perhaps
a a bridge between those two months, because there should
really be a lot more intermingling of the two, especially
(00:48):
after the research that we did for the podcast a
couple of weeks ago on Susan B. Anthony, Right. And
one of the things that became very clear over the
course of our research into Susan B. Anthony, her life
and her work and her single mindedness when it came
to the women's rights movement and women's suffrage was that
there were several important names in black suffrage history who
(01:13):
were essentially overlooked. Yeah, and not only that. One thing
that's often left out of the evolution of the women's
rights movement is that, in a lot of ways, it
grew directly out of the abolition movement. Yeah, efforts towards
abolition were really the first opportunities in the first times
(01:34):
that women gathered in support of a social effort and
really banded together. And not only did they band together,
but they started kind of publicly organizing and publicly getting
out there and writing and donating and agitating for a cause. Yeah,
and it wasn't just white women like Elizabeth Katie Stanton
(01:54):
and Susan B. Anthony who were getting involved in these causes.
For instance, if you go all the way back to
eighteen thirty two, you have, for instance, black women in Salem, Massachusetts,
who were forming an anti slavery society and that was
followed up by a similar movement in Rhode Island of
(02:14):
the same year. And many more of these anti slavery
groups that were organized by black women would follow. But
we should note that a lot of those societies were
short lived, right. And while the abolition movement was already
kind of alive and well and thriving in Europe and
England in particular, in America, the number of suffragists grew
(02:37):
slowly out of this abolition movement um particularly in the Northeast,
and it it did become more diversified nationwide, and through
this growth and diversification, it really was how women sort
of learned about reform efforts and started participating. So, for instance,
in eighteen thirty three, you have an vention held in
(03:00):
Philadelphia that was meeting to establish the American Anti Slavery Society,
and this was led by white abolitionist William Lord Garrison.
And it's significant because not only were they talking about
abolition and the need to free slaves, but also the
need to uh empower women along the way. Right, they
(03:22):
actually passed a resolution commending the abolition caused to women
and urging them to organize groups UH made up of women.
And by eighteen thirty seven, there were more than one
thousand of these anti Slavery Society groups, and about seventy
five of them not somehow, I mean, not a huge number,
but about seventy five of them consisted of women. And
(03:44):
it's important that Kristen noted that this American Anti Slavery
Society was led by William Lloyd Garrison, because there were
folks out there called Garrisonians, um. And these these folks
didn't necessarily oppose women's suffrage, but they emphasized instead the
right of women to gain equal access to things like
(04:05):
education and employment and particularly equality within marriage, the family,
et cetera. They also believed in things like the married
women's rights to property, wages, control over her own body,
and custody of her children. And a very important figure
in this movement was Lucretia Mott. She was a Garrisonian
who also in eighteen thirty three took the lead informing
(04:27):
her own group, the Philadelphia Female Anti Slavery Society, and
that society was racially integrated as well, and among its
members you have notable black women abolitionists like Grace Bustle
Douglas and her daughter Sarah Maps Douglas, as well as
Margaretta and Sarah Forton and Harriett Forton Purvis, who were
(04:49):
daughters of a prosperous Philadelphia salemaker. And I think their
their names will probably come up again in our conversation.
But one other thing I wanted to point out to
about the American Anti Slavery Society is that one of
the reasons that they really advocated for abolishing slavery, I mean,
on so many different levels, but they also focused particularly
(05:11):
on the sexual abuse of slave women as one of
the you know, the main reasons why slavery needed to stop,
and thinking about that in the context of past podcasts
in which we've talked Caroline about um, how that that
issue of black women and sexual abuse, and how for
(05:32):
so long that wasn't even considered a crime, um, and
how progressive that would be in the eighteen thirties for
these Garrisonians to be taking that stance right, particularly since,
as we have talked about before, kind of the overarching
view of black women at the time by both black men,
(05:53):
white men, and white women was that they were just
these over hyper sexualized beings who like, oh, well, that's okay,
we don't really need to worry about that. So the
view of black women at the time was was so negative,
and they were sort of the victims of both sexism
and racism all at the same time, which also lends
(06:13):
even more significance to this early intersection of black and
white abolitionist male and female working alongside each other not
only for the freedom and enfranchisement of slaves, but also
for women as well. And so speaking of that, some
historians actually say that the real spark of first wave
(06:38):
feminism starts not with Seneca Falls, as we will mention
in a moment, but in eighteen thirty eight at the
Anti Slavery Convention of American Women, and they had to
build an actual convention hall specifically for this event because
a lot of members of the white public in particular,
(06:58):
were outraged at this event taking place, and there were
like angry mobs outside. And you have women at this convention,
including Maria W. Chapman and Angelina Grimkey Weld speaking to
crowds of men and women alike, which is a rarity
in these days. And you also have black and white
(07:21):
people who had attended this convention walking arm in arm
outside of Pennsylvania Hall where it took place, in order
to protect, in particular, the black women inside who had
attended from these angry, angry people, angry races. We should
just go ahead and say outside, who did not want
this to be happening. And I don't think it was
(07:42):
that year. Wasn't it the following year that building was
actually burned down by an angry mob who was just
so incensed by the idea of black and white people
gathering together for this cause. Yeah, um, well, I think
it's interesting. Also, you know, you mentioned Angelina Grimkey. I
I really find it interesting to kind of watch the
evolution of the women's rights movement alongside abolition in things
(08:06):
that grim Key herself said, because you know, toward this
cause of abolition and enfranchising African Americans to vote, you know,
she also encourages women to move out of their sphere,
their domestic sphere um and no longer remains satisfied in
the circumscribed limits. She said that it's the duty of
(08:28):
the woman to overthrow the horrible system of American slavery.
So it's interesting to see that leaders in this movement
at this time are basically calling on women to throw
off these their own chains that you know, their own
social situation and really uh put there all of their
force behind this movement. So they're very much parallel at
(08:51):
this time. Yeah, And so that leads us into the
Seneca Falls Convention in July, which is usually the event
that is referenced as the start of the suffrage movement
in the United States, organized largely by Elizabeth Katy Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony. And we should note though that
(09:12):
this is when you start to see some glaring disparities
between uh, white women's suffrage and black women's causes. Because yes,
it was attended by Frederick Douglas, famed Black abolitionist, and
he became the first man to publicly advocate for women's suffrage.
(09:34):
But he was the only African American in attendance at
the Seneca Convention. So it wasn't exactly even though they
were like, oh, Frederick Douglas fantastic, it wasn't exactly you know,
the most racially integrated crowd. Yeah, exactly. And um, I
mean speaking of loan voices and racial integration, when you
(09:55):
look at Sojourner Truth, I mean, that's a name that
everyone knows, it's a common name from this era, but
her name is kind of alone in all of these sources.
A lot of other women of the day, like we said,
have been kind of scrubbed from the record. And in
eighteen fifties, so not too long after the Seneca Falls Convention,
you have the first Massachusetts Women's Rights Convention, which sojournal
(10:19):
Truth attended and it was documented, but you know, other
African American women's voices were not readily documented. Yeah. And
even though we hear about so journal Truth so often
today that I think the assumption would be made that
you'd be readily welcomed by these more progressive crowds of women.
But even speaking before white women who might be pro suffrage,
(10:44):
they weren't always too inclined to have her speaking in
front of them, right, Because if you look at an
eighteen fifty one convention in Ohio, uh SO journal Truth
ended up speaking on behalf of all women in her speech,
not just African Americ women or not just slaved And
this was despite the fact that a lot of white
(11:05):
women at that Ohio convention actually did try to prevent
her from speaking in This kind of stemmed out of
the fear that she would hurt the movement if she
spoke before a hostile audience, because you know, in our
Susan B. Anthony episode, we talk a lot about the
single mindedness. We talk a lot about how it was
women's suffrage or nothing like, nothing can get in the way.
We don't want anything to hurt the movement or distract
(11:27):
anyone from the our purpose, which is women's suffrage will
in their case mostly white women's suffrage. So there was
this fear that if you have a former slave and
a woman, an African American woman, get up in front
of these people and their hostile it could sort of
muddy the message when in fact, at that convention, so
journal truth earned long and loud cheers. Yeah, and we
(11:49):
should also know that happened in one and the year before,
I mean, racial tensions in the United States were starting
to hit such a boiling point, partially due to the
eighteen fifty passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, which in
a nutshell, essentially empowered slave owners in the South to
(12:11):
pursue slaves who might have escaped to areas in the
North where they could find refuge. And uh, it's horrifying
that that law was passed. But that's set off this
um I hate to keep using the word tension, but
it's like it's set off this divisiveness between abolition and suffrage.
(12:36):
And you see, it's especially in the period from eighteen
fifty to eighteen seventy, this gradual separation of white suffrage
from abolition and suffrage for black women. And just quickly
highly recommend if you want to learn more about this topic,
checking out the book by Rosalind turbourg Pen called African
(12:58):
American Women and the Ruggle for the Vote from eighteen
fifty to nineteen twenty that really digs deep into this
topic and even though you know, we've been talking a
lot about, for instance, Angelina Grimkey Weld and other white
abolitionists and white suffrage leaders. There were other people in
addition to so journal Truth as early as the eighteen
fifties and beyond, doing lots of organizing and having leadership
(13:22):
positions in you know, either suffrage groups or in abolition groups. Right. Yeah,
when starting in the early to mid eighteen fifties, black
women's participation in the movement really become became more evident.
Their voices were heard kind of above the din We
have the women who we mentioned earlier, Harriet Forton Purvis
and her sister, educator and abolitionist, Margaretta Forton, who emerged
(13:45):
as major voices during this time, and their niece, Charlotte
Forton Jr. Was actually introduced to the movement in eighteen
fifty five. She was being educated at the time in
Salem because black students in her hometown of Philadelphia were
denied admit into public schools, and she was living in
Salem at the time with a Riemon family who were
noted black abolitionists, and the Reemons themselves were highly involved
(14:09):
in In In eighteen fifty eight, Sarah Reemond and her brother
Charles spoke in New York at a women's rights conference
in favor of women's suffrage. So there again we see
the intersection of abolition and UH women's rights. Yeah, and
then you also have immigrationists Mary Ann Shad Carry who
joined the movement, and immigrationists, I should say, were people
(14:32):
who advocated for UH slaves or free black people just
moving out of the United States completely. If I'm correct,
they were more they were more on the radical end
of the spectrum. But Carry was a powerful woman in
her own right. She ran the anti slavery paper, The
Provincial Freeman, in which she and her sister Amelia Shad
(14:54):
printed news items about women's struggle both against slavery and
gender discrimination. Um. And they also for instance, reported favorably
on Lucy Stones, you know white suffrage leaders nineteen four
visit to Toronto and also received donations from Lucretia Mott,
another white suffrage leader for the publication of The Provincial
(15:18):
Freeman as well. But unfortunately, due to the gender discrimination
of the time, a lot of readers were weren't too
keen on women editors, women newspaper editors. Yeah, that's so
funny that amid all of these contentious fights going on,
these battles for equality, the problem is that they're women. Editor. Yeah, yeah,
(15:38):
but that did not stop Marianne shad Carry from attending
women's suffrage conventions and campaigning for women's rights over the
next twenty five years, right. And in eighteen fifty nine,
you see this, uh coalescing of the movement as evidenced
by the New England Convention of Colored Citizens. And during
(15:59):
the conference, women were elected to leadership positions, and the
convention resulted in a call for universal suffrage. And so
in the eighteen fifties you do really see this compatibility
between the politics of black abolitionists, both male and female.
And it's uh, you know, really notable too that again
(16:19):
you have that female leadership not just within more suffrage
oriented groups, but also among abolitionists and immigrationists. So at
the same time that we see the black abolition movement
coalescing among both men and women, you also have more
white women starting to take active political action as abolitionists.
(16:44):
And as we said, it was this abolition movement that
kind of gave birth to the political push for women's
suffrage and women's rights. And these early women tended to
be a lot more radical in their attempts to oppose
gender conventions by moving outside of their year as as
Grimkey encouraged them to do, and acting independently. And author
(17:05):
Bettina app Sicker also points out in her writing that
this intersection of abolition and women's rights fights, both of
which were revolutionary, tended to reinforce the radicalism of each movement.
But you know, we would be remiss to skip over
the fact that there were a lot fewer limits placed
(17:27):
on white women in terms of both time and effort
and ability to focus on these political movements. Yeah, we
hear the word intersectionality being tossed around a lot more
often these days in terms of how you really can't
untangle how you know, gender collides with race, collides with
economic status and ability and so on and so forth.
(17:50):
And that's not a new thing. This was going on
way back in the nineteenth century when these first movements
were starting to gain momentum, And you can't deny that
even back then, there was plenty of white privilege yield
privilege happening in terms of how a lot of the
(18:12):
white women involved in these movements were often middle class
or elite women who typically weren't working outside the home
and so they had more time to devote to their causes. Uh.
And they also didn't have to contend as much with
issues like poverty or illiteracy that were often direct issues
(18:32):
for people coming out of slavery. And so you know,
you do start to see this erosion between white women
and the cause of black suffrage. And we're gonna get
more into that and talk about more significant black suffrage
leaders at the time when we come right back from
a quick break and now back to the show. So
(18:55):
when we last left off in this conversation about black
women in the suffrage movement, we were we were talking
about this issue of white privilege, for instance, coming up
in terms of how white suffrage leaders and abolitionists did
enjoy more economic privilege in terms of not having to
work outside the home, having more time to devote to
(19:15):
their causes. Um. And while these kinds of racial differences
were starting to become more direct issues, there was a
lot of harmony still going on. I mean, the fact
that you know, abolition and suffrage were working side by
side is still very much the case. For instance, from
(19:36):
eighteen sixty six to eighteen sixty nine. You have the
existence of the American Equal Rights Association, whose goal was
to quote secure equal rights to all American citizens, especially
the right of suffrage irrespective of race, color, or sex.
And you have with that the involvement of big names
like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Katie Stanton, uh the support
(20:00):
of Harriet Tubman. So so June or truth. You have
women working across the aisles and by aisles, I mean
racial aisles for this movement, because this is the time
where it still seems like they can have a universal
suffrage movement granting black men and women the vote as
well as white women the vote. Everybody gets the vote, basically, right.
(20:23):
But things in the mind of Susan Anthony and Elizabeth
Katie Stanton and other white suffragists, things start to go
awry after the Civil War in their minds, um because
it was in this aftermath of the Civil War that
we have Republican politicians introducing the fourteenth and fifteenth Amendments
to the Constitution extending citizens citizenship and suffrage two former
(20:48):
slave men. And so that's when you start to see
this divide, because then suffrage gains the central place in
that battle for women's rights among women like Anthony and stand.
You have these former abolitionist allies, you know, including those
who had long advocated for women's rights, becoming divided over priorities. Yeah.
(21:11):
I mean because at this point, probably in the minds
of some of these suffrage leaders are like, hey, well
we've got abolition al right, Slavery is no longer legal
in the United States, so now it's time to really
press for the vote. And there were a number of
politicians who were promising suffrage leaders that yes, they would
with the fourteenth Amendment, they would get the vote, that
(21:35):
that would be universal suffrage. But no, the word mail
stayed in that amendment, and there was a lot of protestations.
And then when the fifteenth Amendment came up, uh, Susan
Anthony and Elizabeth Katie Stanton were directly opposed to it.
And this is when you see a major rift happening
(21:55):
in the suffrage movement in general. Because we should note
that in eighteen sixty seven there is a moment that
has often left out of women's studies classes, that which
is when the American Equal Rights Association is launching a
campaign in Kansas and Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Katie
(22:16):
Stanton accept funding from known racist George Tryan. This is
something we mentioned in our podcast on Susan B. Anthony,
And this is when other women in the UH the
A R A, like Lucretia Mott, who was the president
at the time, We're starting to say WHOA, whoa, what
are what are you all doing? And from the perspective
(22:37):
of Elizabeth Katy stand, she was like, well, I want
to publish this newspaper called The Revolution, and you know,
evolution has happened, so we really need to just focus
on suffrage. And this guy, George Train is going to
fund it. And there were even people like William Lloyd
Garrison who, after this happened, this is a couple of
years later, who wrote publicly to Elizabeth Katie Stanton saying, whoa,
(23:03):
what are you doing? Well? How how could you be
accepting funding from this from this racist, this known racist. Yeah,
because there was that huge rift between those who felt
that black men needed the vote more than women and
those who were unwilling to postpone women's suffrage for the
sake of black men like Susan B. Anthony, like Elizabeth
Katie Stanton, and so in eighteen sixty nine, you not
(23:25):
only have the passage of the fifteenth Amendment, which granted
black men the vote but not women, you have the
effective rift between the mainstream suffrage movement, and so it
splits into the American Women's Suffrage Association, which is pro
fifteenth Amendment, and the National American Women's Suffrage Association, which
(23:46):
was the organization led by Stanton and Anthony and Katherine H. Palzuski,
who's a professor of Women's and gender studies at the
University of Northern Iowa, notes that after the fifteenth Amendment
to a Constitution, a quote unquote racist component of the
suffrage campaign ensued, which is so unfortunate. There's even a
(24:08):
book about this called A Fighting Chance, and it's basically
focusing in on this time when suffrage loses a lot
of momentum because of that split, due to underlying honestly
racist motivations. Because at this point, I mean, Elizabeth Katie
Stanton is writing some things that we can't say on
(24:33):
the podcast, basically saying, hey, listen, why why would you
want to give the vote to a black man who
might be illiterate and doesn't know what he's talking about?
To put it in actually really nice, euphimistic terms, UM,
and other people saying what what what, what is happening?
And at this point, podcast listeners, Caroline might be thinking,
(24:53):
we've been hearing a lot about a couple of white women,
Elizabeth Katy Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Uh So, now
we do need to focus even more on these black
women who were regardless of whatever was happening with those
you know, the split between those two main suffrage organizations
that then developed after the passage of the fifteenth Amendment,
(25:14):
who had been organizing on their own and were paving
the way among their own communities for suffrage and empowerment
of these new and emerging black communities across the United States. Right,
And we we named a lot of women whose Black
women whose voices emerged decades earlier in the fight for
(25:35):
abolition UM and women's rights and suffrage UM, and in
the eighteen eighties and nineties, and is when we really
see the development of these things called Black women's clubs,
and their heyday was really in the eighteen nineties, petering
off by about the nineteen twenties and thirties, and these
Black women's clubs had goals that were unique to African
(25:56):
American women. They weren't trying to ban together with white
stuff or just or white women's rights activists at this time.
This was an effort by black women to help each
other access higher education, participate in the suffrage movement. And
for the Black women who did join these groups, a
lot of them were divided into two camps, those who
(26:18):
did identify with the mainstream white suffrage organizations and those
who develop their own agendas in these black women's clubs. Yeah,
and and the fact that they formed these social clubs
that were it was more of grassroots organizing on a
local level and which did develop, as we'll talk about,
into national organizations. It makes so much sense when you
(26:38):
consider the context that this is happening in Rosalin Turborg.
Penn talks about this in her book African American Women
in the Struggle for the Vote of how after the
emancipation of slaves in the South in eighteen sixty three, quote,
the immediate priority of freed women was to find lost
loved ones and to establish viable households while attempting to
(26:59):
count her white terrorism. And we'll talk about that more
with the work of Ida b. Wells Um And she
said that freed women in particular were more likely to
see suffrage as a collective not an individual possession. And
to me, these social clubs are a reflection of that
unique perspective of saying, Hey, we need to you know,
(27:22):
build ourselves up, we need to build our communities up,
we need to organize on these local levels, especially because
by this time we're talking about in the eighteen eighties
and nineties, plenty of white suffers groups were completely turning
their backs on Black women. Yeah. And you know, these
these clubs, uh early on filled sort of a literary
(27:43):
and self improvement role for women in these various communities, um,
women who had been denied an education at college after
the Civil War. And in the eighteen nineties you really
start to see them turning from just social and literary
pursuits two more social justice and activism because you have
(28:03):
the demise of reconstruction, but the rise of Jim Crow. Yeah,
and I mean there's there's so much racism still simmering
clearly during this time. I mean, the Jim Crow era
is so notorious for that. And we have this merger
between three major national social clubs forming the National Association
(28:27):
of Colored Women Clubs due to this letter written by
James Jacks, who was the president of the Missouri Press Association,
which was challenging the respectability of African American women, referring
to them as thieves and prostitutes, to which women like
Mary Church Tyrrell, who was the first president of the
(28:47):
National Association of Colored Women's club said, oh, oh really, really,
Jack's no, And so they continued organizing and on a
national level, and founders of the inn A c WC
included women like Josephine Ruff and Harry Tubman, Margaret Murray Washington,
Francis C. W Harper, Ida Wells Barnett, and again Mary
(29:10):
Church Terrell, who I mean she was Terrell herself as
an incredible biography and um was educated at Oberlin. A
lot of these women actually ended up going to Oberlin because,
as we talked about in our Women's Colleges episode, that
was one of the first mainstream US colleges that was
open to not just women, but women of color as well.
(29:34):
And you mentioned Idabelle Wells who became Ida Wells Barnett.
She is a kind of an exciting character. She was
a journalist who gained fame in the mid eighteen eighties
by refusing to give up her train seat to a
white man and moved to a Jim Crow car. Chaos
and Sue's wells was dragged from the train. She hires
(29:55):
a lawyer to see the railroad. She won her case
in eighteen eighty four and received a settle meant um,
and although the railroad did appeal her case, she therefore
afterward earned a reputation as a very powerful voice against racism.
And she also her main focus for a long time
was anti lynching law. She by the eight nineties had
(30:18):
started this crustade sort of working among these various women's
clubs to draw attention to the issue. Yeah, and this
is because she was living in Memphis at the time,
and there was there were horrific cases of lynching happening.
And I think what finally spurred her into action was
a black man that she knew being killed by a
(30:40):
lynch mob. And um, speaking though, like really quickly about
that incident on the train, I I wish that that
was as common of an historical milestone, because it really
was a milestone as the story of Rosa Parks not
giving up her seat, Because when I read, I was like,
why why is this not in every single history book
(31:03):
as well? It seems like that, you know, her day
had a lot to do with it. She happened to
live in a time when women like Susan B. Anthony
and Elizabeth Katie Stanton Stanton, we're writing the feminist history books. Yeah, yeah,
absolutely and um in in two um she really established
her national reputation as being this person speaking out, but
(31:26):
being a woman in particular speaking out against lynching when
she publishes the book Southern Horror Lynching Law in all
its phases, and she even goes international with her crusade,
going over to Britain to talk about, Hey, this is
happening in the United States, we need to talk about it. Um.
In nineteen o nine, she also helped found the Double
(31:46):
A c P. Yeah, and you might not think it
could get any better than that. I mean, this woman
helped found the Double A CP. But her shining moment
came in nineteen thirteen when, after founding the Alpha Suffrage
Club of Illinois, was the largest Black woman's suffrage club
in Illinois. She she calls quite a stir at a
(32:07):
march uh the NAWSA, the National American Women's Suffrage Association
was marching in Washington, d C. But Black women were
told to march at the back, and you know, she
refused to comply. She leaves the parade site and everybody's like, oh, good,
she's gone. Not exactly. She waits until the parade starts
and she just ever so casually steps out of the
(32:31):
crowd and joins her sympathetic white colleagues from Illinois Bell
Squire and Virginia Brooks at the front of the parade
where you know, the press was there. They captured it
for eternity, and that press coverage did have an effect.
I mean it did sort of transmits the message to
a lot of black women that no, you have a
(32:52):
place in this Yeah, because we should know that. By
this time, the National American Women's Suffrage Association has re
orge together. Those two splinter groups have come back together
under the leadership of again Elizabeth Katy Santon and Susan B. Anthony.
But they they were choosy in terms of allowing or
(33:15):
not allowing black women to participate, which is part of
the reason why you know, you have the emergence of
these social clubs um and these black women specific suffrage organizations,
and uh, just the way that they the way that
they treated these black women who wanted to participate in
this massive march. It was getting all this attention, and
(33:37):
it wasn't all positive attention at all. I mean there
were a lot of hecklers in the crowd too, And
so the fact that Ida Wells did not care again
like on the train, was like, no, I'm not gonna
just like sit in the back. Um. But we should
also note to speaking of this parade, that in nineteen
o nine, a few years before, we have, in addition
(33:59):
to this social clubs emerging on college campuses, we have
the first African American sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha develop and
UM Delta Sigma Theta, which is one of the oldest
African American sororities, also marched in that nineteen thirteen in
a ws A parade with Ida B. Wells. And I
(34:21):
know that just in reading articles about it, because the anniversary,
you know, was last year. Um, that's a huge point
of pride for that sorority. Yeah. But around this time,
you know, there's a lot of kind of anger and
disillusionment among a lot of African American women who were saying,
we've been alongside you this whole time, you know, all
the way from the abolition movement into the suffrage and
(34:43):
women's rights movement, and now you're turning your backs on us.
And a lot of it, honestly, particularly with for instance,
that Washington, d c. Parade where Ida b. Wells was
told to get out. You know, a lot of these
white women suffrages were concerned about, you know, ankling the
Southern contingent. Yeah. For instance, there was this convention suffrage
(35:06):
convention happening in Atlanta, and this was a few years back,
and Susan Anthony was going to leave this convention and
Frederick Douglas wanted to attend, but she said, hey, yeah,
if you could just not come, that'd be really great
because we don't want to freak Southern women out. So yeah,
(35:26):
it was all an effort to focus solely on women's suffrage,
mostly white women's suffrage. Yeah, because at that point race
was seen as a liability to their cause if they
aligned themselves too much. Because one thing too, that we
should note is that the one of the main strategies
of the National American Women's Suffrage Association for getting the
(35:49):
vote was to go on a state by state basis,
so they needed to court Southern voters who you know,
we're we're living in that Jim Crow era, right, and
so they were honestly worried that the participation of black
women would jeopardize the passage of the nineteenth Amendment, which
did get passed in right right, and it's called the
(36:10):
Susan B. Anthony Amendment, as we've noted, UM. But one
thing too that I should have mentioned earlier when we
talked about that um splintering of the the mainstream suffrage
movement into the NAWSA led by Santon and Anthony and
then the American Women's Suffrage Association, which was supportive of
(36:31):
the fifteenth Amendment. That um Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin was
one of the founders of the a ws A, UM
who later went on to be one of the leading
members of the National Association of Colored Women, which was
that overarching organization for all of those social clubs. So
(36:53):
she's you know, it's just yet another name that is
left out largely of the nineteen o two history of
women's suffrage, which for so long has been like the
go to chronicle of the fight for Women's Vote in
the United States, co authored by Susan B. Anthony and
(37:14):
Stanton and a woman named Matilda Joscely Engage, and so
journal Truth is the only the only African American woman
mentioned in there. Yea, and that that omission, those multiple omissions,
um really discouraged a lot of people because these suffragists,
(37:34):
as we mentioned, a lot of these the white suffragists
were of more elite social standing, and so both black
women and working class white women kind of felt like, whoa,
you know, we were a part of this too the
whole time, and you've just used us as a stepping stone.
You know, it was great to have us when you
needed people to agitate on your behalf, but now you
(37:56):
know you're not helping us out. And you know, not
too long after nineteenth Amendment was past, black women were
effectively disenfranchised because of that Jim Crow era. Yeah, I mean,
and throughout this podcast that might be sounding like we're
trying to paint all of the white suffrage leaders that
you often hear about in history classes as just a
(38:18):
pack of racists that we you know, but it's that's
that's not the case. This is more telling the story
of how race and gender were really pitted against each
other during this time. I mean we we could move
on up the flagpole and talk about, hey, well, why
weren't the men in office just going ahead and taking
(38:39):
that word mail out of the fourteenth Amendment or out
of the fifteenth Amendment and granting universal suffrage. If universal
suffrage had been granted in the eighteen sixties, I wonder
what feminism would look like today, because you wouldn't perhaps
you would not have had this I don't want it
(39:00):
say dirty underbelly, but but just like the agitating for
one thing over another instead of putting them together and
arguing for women's rights and rights for African Americans right.
And and there have been some historical accounts to looking,
you know, taking a closer look at the primary documents
of the time and saying, okay, well, you know we're
(39:20):
Elizabeth Katy Stanton and Susan B. Anthony just outright racist,
and a lot of people saying no, it was really
a matter of funding and money and sort of being
painted into a corner. So, if if anything, from this conversation,
this is even more a testament to the work of
(39:42):
Harriet Tubman sojourn or truth, Mary Church Terrell, I to
b Wells and so on and so forth for continuing
in that pursuit of you know, the enfranchisement not only
of people of color, but also uh for for women,
for women's suffrage, and and it's also to why it's
unfortunate that their stories are not told more often. Absolutely
(40:06):
absolutely Now Unfortunately we you know, we could, We couldn't
even in one podcast give as detailed of a history
of black women in the suffrage movement during this era
as we would have liked. Um. So, if if you
want some further reading, and if you want to check
out our sources to learn more about these women that
we mentioned, you should head on over to Stuff I've
(40:28):
Never Told You dot com, where we'll have the podcast
posted and if you click on the link, it will
have all of the sources inside of that podcast Postum.
But we also want to hear from you. Were their
names that we left out? Um? I'm sure that there were.
What are your Has this changed your perspective on the
suffrage movement because again, we don't we don't want to
(40:50):
paint it in a negative light, but we need to
be a little more honest about it. Perhaps, sure, Yeah,
everything wasn't puppies and kittens and rainbows during a suffrage movement? Surprisingly, also,
Frederick Douglas, can we just like in terms of like
amazing dudes on the podcast? We should. If there is
a Sminty Men's Hall of Fame, he definitely deserves a place. Um,
(41:12):
so let us know your thoughts. Mom Stuff at Discovery
dot com is where you can send us your emails.
You can also reach us on Twitter at mom Stuff
podcast and on Facebook as well, and we've got a
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I've got a Facebook message here from Samantha about our
(41:34):
episode on paras social relationships and shipping called Fictional Attraction.
She writes, since my freshman year of college, I've gotten
deeper and deeper into myriad fandoms and ships from which
I hope to never emerge while meeting some truly amazing people.
I wanted to let you guys know, though, that your
definition of slash my primary interest is not correct. You
(41:55):
defined it strangely as pairings or fan fixed deals exclusively
with actors having sex, and I have no idea where
that definition came from. SLASH is simply pairings that are
same sex and usually male. As fem slash is used
to define female pairings, much of the fanfic associated with
slash is not sexually explicit, just as much of het
fanfic is very sexually explicit. There's a variety there, as
(42:19):
in every subsector of fanfic and fandom. Something else I
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slash writers slash fans consist of mostly straight teen and
preteen girls, every slash fan I know of, including myself,
is a queer woman who writes and reads slash fanfic,
largely out of a desire to see greater queer relationship
(42:39):
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too think it's hot. I just wanted to put that
out there, maybe as another example of how slash shipping
and fandoms can be representative of larger issues and struggles.
So thanks Samantha for that insight. U fan fix Well,
I have a message here from Jessica about our episode
(43:02):
on Can Birth Control Kill You? She says, uh, I
noticed that you ladies didn't really touch much on the
adverse effects of birth control when taken with other medications
in the past. I was put on a drug for
anxiety and an oral contraceptive. All doctors involved knew about
all the drugs I was taking, but weren't aware of
any interactions. I eventually started having extreme dizziness and heart
(43:24):
palpitations that eventually led to a grand Mall seizure on
the sidewalk while heading to work. Even after that, no
one put together that it was the drugs that were
interacting negatively until four months later, when my gynecologist received
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(43:45):
could cause seizures and even death, but yet none of
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news is that my mom recently called several pharmacies about
any potential interaction between the anxiety drug and oral contrast optives,
and they weren't well versed in these interactions. So thank
(44:05):
you so much for sharing your story. Jessica. I'm sorry
you had such a scary health emergency, but this is
just another example of how important it is to educate yourself.
You know, about the drugs you're taking, about any type
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(44:25):
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(44:47):
com for more on this and thousands of other topics
because it has stuff works dot com. Six
Welcome to Stuff Mob Never Told You from House Supports
dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
and I'm Caroline and Caroline. This episode highlighting Black women
of the suffrage movement is really appropriate timing wise because
(00:25):
it's coming out the last week of February, so the
last week of Black History Month, leading us into Women's
History Month. So in my mind, this episode is perhaps
a a bridge between those two months, because there should
really be a lot more intermingling of the two, especially
(00:48):
after the research that we did for the podcast a
couple of weeks ago on Susan B. Anthony, Right. And
one of the things that became very clear over the
course of our research into Susan B. Anthony, her life
and her work and her single mindedness when it came
to the women's rights movement and women's suffrage was that
there were several important names in black suffrage history who
(01:13):
were essentially overlooked. Yeah, and not only that. One thing
that's often left out of the evolution of the women's
rights movement is that, in a lot of ways, it
grew directly out of the abolition movement. Yeah, efforts towards
abolition were really the first opportunities in the first times
(01:34):
that women gathered in support of a social effort and
really banded together. And not only did they band together,
but they started kind of publicly organizing and publicly getting
out there and writing and donating and agitating for a cause. Yeah,
and it wasn't just white women like Elizabeth Katie Stanton
(01:54):
and Susan B. Anthony who were getting involved in these causes.
For instance, if you go all the way back to
eighteen thirty two, you have, for instance, black women in Salem, Massachusetts,
who were forming an anti slavery society and that was
followed up by a similar movement in Rhode Island of
(02:14):
the same year. And many more of these anti slavery
groups that were organized by black women would follow. But
we should note that a lot of those societies were
short lived, right. And while the abolition movement was already
kind of alive and well and thriving in Europe and
England in particular, in America, the number of suffragists grew
(02:37):
slowly out of this abolition movement um particularly in the Northeast,
and it it did become more diversified nationwide, and through
this growth and diversification, it really was how women sort
of learned about reform efforts and started participating. So, for instance,
in eighteen thirty three, you have an vention held in
(03:00):
Philadelphia that was meeting to establish the American Anti Slavery Society,
and this was led by white abolitionist William Lord Garrison.
And it's significant because not only were they talking about
abolition and the need to free slaves, but also the
need to uh empower women along the way. Right, they
(03:22):
actually passed a resolution commending the abolition caused to women
and urging them to organize groups UH made up of women.
And by eighteen thirty seven, there were more than one
thousand of these anti Slavery Society groups, and about seventy
five of them not somehow, I mean, not a huge number,
but about seventy five of them consisted of women. And
(03:44):
it's important that Kristen noted that this American Anti Slavery
Society was led by William Lloyd Garrison, because there were
folks out there called Garrisonians, um. And these these folks
didn't necessarily oppose women's suffrage, but they emphasized instead the
right of women to gain equal access to things like
(04:05):
education and employment and particularly equality within marriage, the family,
et cetera. They also believed in things like the married
women's rights to property, wages, control over her own body,
and custody of her children. And a very important figure
in this movement was Lucretia Mott. She was a Garrisonian
who also in eighteen thirty three took the lead informing
(04:27):
her own group, the Philadelphia Female Anti Slavery Society, and
that society was racially integrated as well, and among its
members you have notable black women abolitionists like Grace Bustle
Douglas and her daughter Sarah Maps Douglas, as well as
Margaretta and Sarah Forton and Harriett Forton Purvis, who were
(04:49):
daughters of a prosperous Philadelphia salemaker. And I think their
their names will probably come up again in our conversation.
But one other thing I wanted to point out to
about the American Anti Slavery Society is that one of
the reasons that they really advocated for abolishing slavery, I mean,
on so many different levels, but they also focused particularly
(05:11):
on the sexual abuse of slave women as one of
the you know, the main reasons why slavery needed to stop,
and thinking about that in the context of past podcasts
in which we've talked Caroline about um, how that that
issue of black women and sexual abuse, and how for
(05:32):
so long that wasn't even considered a crime, um, and
how progressive that would be in the eighteen thirties for
these Garrisonians to be taking that stance right, particularly since,
as we have talked about before, kind of the overarching
view of black women at the time by both black men,
(05:53):
white men, and white women was that they were just
these over hyper sexualized beings who like, oh, well, that's okay,
we don't really need to worry about that. So the
view of black women at the time was was so negative,
and they were sort of the victims of both sexism
and racism all at the same time, which also lends
(06:13):
even more significance to this early intersection of black and
white abolitionist male and female working alongside each other not
only for the freedom and enfranchisement of slaves, but also
for women as well. And so speaking of that, some
historians actually say that the real spark of first wave
(06:38):
feminism starts not with Seneca Falls, as we will mention
in a moment, but in eighteen thirty eight at the
Anti Slavery Convention of American Women, and they had to
build an actual convention hall specifically for this event because
a lot of members of the white public in particular,
(06:58):
were outraged at this event taking place, and there were
like angry mobs outside. And you have women at this convention,
including Maria W. Chapman and Angelina Grimkey Weld speaking to
crowds of men and women alike, which is a rarity
in these days. And you also have black and white
(07:21):
people who had attended this convention walking arm in arm
outside of Pennsylvania Hall where it took place, in order
to protect, in particular, the black women inside who had
attended from these angry, angry people, angry races. We should
just go ahead and say outside, who did not want
this to be happening. And I don't think it was
(07:42):
that year. Wasn't it the following year that building was
actually burned down by an angry mob who was just
so incensed by the idea of black and white people
gathering together for this cause. Yeah, um, well, I think
it's interesting. Also, you know, you mentioned Angelina Grimkey. I
I really find it interesting to kind of watch the
evolution of the women's rights movement alongside abolition in things
(08:06):
that grim Key herself said, because you know, toward this
cause of abolition and enfranchising African Americans to vote, you know,
she also encourages women to move out of their sphere,
their domestic sphere um and no longer remains satisfied in
the circumscribed limits. She said that it's the duty of
(08:28):
the woman to overthrow the horrible system of American slavery.
So it's interesting to see that leaders in this movement
at this time are basically calling on women to throw
off these their own chains that you know, their own
social situation and really uh put there all of their
force behind this movement. So they're very much parallel at
(08:51):
this time. Yeah, And so that leads us into the
Seneca Falls Convention in July, which is usually the event
that is referenced as the start of the suffrage movement
in the United States, organized largely by Elizabeth Katy Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony. And we should note though that
(09:12):
this is when you start to see some glaring disparities
between uh, white women's suffrage and black women's causes. Because yes,
it was attended by Frederick Douglas, famed Black abolitionist, and
he became the first man to publicly advocate for women's suffrage.
(09:34):
But he was the only African American in attendance at
the Seneca Convention. So it wasn't exactly even though they
were like, oh, Frederick Douglas fantastic, it wasn't exactly you know,
the most racially integrated crowd. Yeah, exactly. And um, I
mean speaking of loan voices and racial integration, when you
(09:55):
look at Sojourner Truth, I mean, that's a name that
everyone knows, it's a common name from this era, but
her name is kind of alone in all of these sources.
A lot of other women of the day, like we said,
have been kind of scrubbed from the record. And in
eighteen fifties, so not too long after the Seneca Falls Convention,
you have the first Massachusetts Women's Rights Convention, which sojournal
(10:19):
Truth attended and it was documented, but you know, other
African American women's voices were not readily documented. Yeah. And
even though we hear about so journal Truth so often
today that I think the assumption would be made that
you'd be readily welcomed by these more progressive crowds of women.
But even speaking before white women who might be pro suffrage,
(10:44):
they weren't always too inclined to have her speaking in
front of them, right, Because if you look at an
eighteen fifty one convention in Ohio, uh SO journal Truth
ended up speaking on behalf of all women in her speech,
not just African Americ women or not just slaved And
this was despite the fact that a lot of white
(11:05):
women at that Ohio convention actually did try to prevent
her from speaking in This kind of stemmed out of
the fear that she would hurt the movement if she
spoke before a hostile audience, because you know, in our
Susan B. Anthony episode, we talk a lot about the
single mindedness. We talk a lot about how it was
women's suffrage or nothing like, nothing can get in the way.
We don't want anything to hurt the movement or distract
(11:27):
anyone from the our purpose, which is women's suffrage will
in their case mostly white women's suffrage. So there was
this fear that if you have a former slave and
a woman, an African American woman, get up in front
of these people and their hostile it could sort of
muddy the message when in fact, at that convention, so
journal truth earned long and loud cheers. Yeah, and we
(11:49):
should also know that happened in one and the year before,
I mean, racial tensions in the United States were starting
to hit such a boiling point, partially due to the
eighteen fifty passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, which in
a nutshell, essentially empowered slave owners in the South to
(12:11):
pursue slaves who might have escaped to areas in the
North where they could find refuge. And uh, it's horrifying
that that law was passed. But that's set off this
um I hate to keep using the word tension, but
it's like it's set off this divisiveness between abolition and suffrage.
(12:36):
And you see, it's especially in the period from eighteen
fifty to eighteen seventy, this gradual separation of white suffrage
from abolition and suffrage for black women. And just quickly
highly recommend if you want to learn more about this topic,
checking out the book by Rosalind turbourg Pen called African
(12:58):
American Women and the Ruggle for the Vote from eighteen
fifty to nineteen twenty that really digs deep into this
topic and even though you know, we've been talking a
lot about, for instance, Angelina Grimkey Weld and other white
abolitionists and white suffrage leaders. There were other people in
addition to so journal Truth as early as the eighteen
fifties and beyond, doing lots of organizing and having leadership
(13:22):
positions in you know, either suffrage groups or in abolition groups. Right. Yeah,
when starting in the early to mid eighteen fifties, black
women's participation in the movement really become became more evident.
Their voices were heard kind of above the din We
have the women who we mentioned earlier, Harriet Forton Purvis
and her sister, educator and abolitionist, Margaretta Forton, who emerged
(13:45):
as major voices during this time, and their niece, Charlotte
Forton Jr. Was actually introduced to the movement in eighteen
fifty five. She was being educated at the time in
Salem because black students in her hometown of Philadelphia were
denied admit into public schools, and she was living in
Salem at the time with a Riemon family who were
noted black abolitionists, and the Reemons themselves were highly involved
(14:09):
in In In eighteen fifty eight, Sarah Reemond and her brother
Charles spoke in New York at a women's rights conference
in favor of women's suffrage. So there again we see
the intersection of abolition and UH women's rights. Yeah, and
then you also have immigrationists Mary Ann Shad Carry who
joined the movement, and immigrationists, I should say, were people
(14:32):
who advocated for UH slaves or free black people just
moving out of the United States completely. If I'm correct,
they were more they were more on the radical end
of the spectrum. But Carry was a powerful woman in
her own right. She ran the anti slavery paper, The
Provincial Freeman, in which she and her sister Amelia Shad
(14:54):
printed news items about women's struggle both against slavery and
gender discrimination. Um. And they also for instance, reported favorably
on Lucy Stones, you know white suffrage leaders nineteen four
visit to Toronto and also received donations from Lucretia Mott,
another white suffrage leader for the publication of The Provincial
(15:18):
Freeman as well. But unfortunately, due to the gender discrimination
of the time, a lot of readers were weren't too
keen on women editors, women newspaper editors. Yeah, that's so
funny that amid all of these contentious fights going on,
these battles for equality, the problem is that they're women. Editor. Yeah, yeah,
(15:38):
but that did not stop Marianne shad Carry from attending
women's suffrage conventions and campaigning for women's rights over the
next twenty five years, right. And in eighteen fifty nine,
you see this, uh coalescing of the movement as evidenced
by the New England Convention of Colored Citizens. And during
(15:59):
the conference, women were elected to leadership positions, and the
convention resulted in a call for universal suffrage. And so
in the eighteen fifties you do really see this compatibility
between the politics of black abolitionists, both male and female.
And it's uh, you know, really notable too that again
(16:19):
you have that female leadership not just within more suffrage
oriented groups, but also among abolitionists and immigrationists. So at
the same time that we see the black abolition movement
coalescing among both men and women, you also have more
white women starting to take active political action as abolitionists.
(16:44):
And as we said, it was this abolition movement that
kind of gave birth to the political push for women's
suffrage and women's rights. And these early women tended to
be a lot more radical in their attempts to oppose
gender conventions by moving outside of their year as as
Grimkey encouraged them to do, and acting independently. And author
(17:05):
Bettina app Sicker also points out in her writing that
this intersection of abolition and women's rights fights, both of
which were revolutionary, tended to reinforce the radicalism of each movement.
But you know, we would be remiss to skip over
the fact that there were a lot fewer limits placed
(17:27):
on white women in terms of both time and effort
and ability to focus on these political movements. Yeah, we
hear the word intersectionality being tossed around a lot more
often these days in terms of how you really can't
untangle how you know, gender collides with race, collides with
economic status and ability and so on and so forth.
(17:50):
And that's not a new thing. This was going on
way back in the nineteenth century when these first movements
were starting to gain momentum, And you can't deny that
even back then, there was plenty of white privilege yield
privilege happening in terms of how a lot of the
(18:12):
white women involved in these movements were often middle class
or elite women who typically weren't working outside the home
and so they had more time to devote to their causes. Uh.
And they also didn't have to contend as much with
issues like poverty or illiteracy that were often direct issues
(18:32):
for people coming out of slavery. And so you know,
you do start to see this erosion between white women
and the cause of black suffrage. And we're gonna get
more into that and talk about more significant black suffrage
leaders at the time when we come right back from
a quick break and now back to the show. So
(18:55):
when we last left off in this conversation about black
women in the suffrage movement, we were we were talking
about this issue of white privilege, for instance, coming up
in terms of how white suffrage leaders and abolitionists did
enjoy more economic privilege in terms of not having to
work outside the home, having more time to devote to
(19:15):
their causes. Um. And while these kinds of racial differences
were starting to become more direct issues, there was a
lot of harmony still going on. I mean, the fact
that you know, abolition and suffrage were working side by
side is still very much the case. For instance, from
(19:36):
eighteen sixty six to eighteen sixty nine. You have the
existence of the American Equal Rights Association, whose goal was
to quote secure equal rights to all American citizens, especially
the right of suffrage irrespective of race, color, or sex.
And you have with that the involvement of big names
like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Katie Stanton, uh the support
(20:00):
of Harriet Tubman. So so June or truth. You have
women working across the aisles and by aisles, I mean
racial aisles for this movement, because this is the time
where it still seems like they can have a universal
suffrage movement granting black men and women the vote as
well as white women the vote. Everybody gets the vote, basically, right.
(20:23):
But things in the mind of Susan Anthony and Elizabeth
Katie Stanton and other white suffragists, things start to go
awry after the Civil War in their minds, um because
it was in this aftermath of the Civil War that
we have Republican politicians introducing the fourteenth and fifteenth Amendments
to the Constitution extending citizens citizenship and suffrage two former
(20:48):
slave men. And so that's when you start to see
this divide, because then suffrage gains the central place in
that battle for women's rights among women like Anthony and stand.
You have these former abolitionist allies, you know, including those
who had long advocated for women's rights, becoming divided over priorities. Yeah.
(21:11):
I mean because at this point, probably in the minds
of some of these suffrage leaders are like, hey, well
we've got abolition al right, Slavery is no longer legal
in the United States, so now it's time to really
press for the vote. And there were a number of
politicians who were promising suffrage leaders that yes, they would
with the fourteenth Amendment, they would get the vote, that
(21:35):
that would be universal suffrage. But no, the word mail
stayed in that amendment, and there was a lot of protestations.
And then when the fifteenth Amendment came up, uh, Susan
Anthony and Elizabeth Katie Stanton were directly opposed to it.
And this is when you see a major rift happening
(21:55):
in the suffrage movement in general. Because we should note
that in eighteen sixty seven there is a moment that
has often left out of women's studies classes, that which
is when the American Equal Rights Association is launching a
campaign in Kansas and Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Katie
(22:16):
Stanton accept funding from known racist George Tryan. This is
something we mentioned in our podcast on Susan B. Anthony,
And this is when other women in the UH the
A R A, like Lucretia Mott, who was the president
at the time, We're starting to say WHOA, whoa, what
are what are you all doing? And from the perspective
(22:37):
of Elizabeth Katy stand, she was like, well, I want
to publish this newspaper called The Revolution, and you know,
evolution has happened, so we really need to just focus
on suffrage. And this guy, George Train is going to
fund it. And there were even people like William Lloyd
Garrison who, after this happened, this is a couple of
years later, who wrote publicly to Elizabeth Katie Stanton saying, whoa,
(23:03):
what are you doing? Well? How how could you be
accepting funding from this from this racist, this known racist. Yeah,
because there was that huge rift between those who felt
that black men needed the vote more than women and
those who were unwilling to postpone women's suffrage for the
sake of black men like Susan B. Anthony, like Elizabeth
Katie Stanton, and so in eighteen sixty nine, you not
(23:25):
only have the passage of the fifteenth Amendment, which granted
black men the vote but not women, you have the
effective rift between the mainstream suffrage movement, and so it
splits into the American Women's Suffrage Association, which is pro
fifteenth Amendment, and the National American Women's Suffrage Association, which
(23:46):
was the organization led by Stanton and Anthony and Katherine H. Palzuski,
who's a professor of Women's and gender studies at the
University of Northern Iowa, notes that after the fifteenth Amendment
to a Constitution, a quote unquote racist component of the
suffrage campaign ensued, which is so unfortunate. There's even a
(24:08):
book about this called A Fighting Chance, and it's basically
focusing in on this time when suffrage loses a lot
of momentum because of that split, due to underlying honestly
racist motivations. Because at this point, I mean, Elizabeth Katie
Stanton is writing some things that we can't say on
(24:33):
the podcast, basically saying, hey, listen, why why would you
want to give the vote to a black man who
might be illiterate and doesn't know what he's talking about?
To put it in actually really nice, euphimistic terms, UM,
and other people saying what what what, what is happening?
And at this point, podcast listeners, Caroline might be thinking,
(24:53):
we've been hearing a lot about a couple of white women,
Elizabeth Katy Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Uh So, now
we do need to focus even more on these black
women who were regardless of whatever was happening with those
you know, the split between those two main suffrage organizations
that then developed after the passage of the fifteenth Amendment,
(25:14):
who had been organizing on their own and were paving
the way among their own communities for suffrage and empowerment
of these new and emerging black communities across the United States. Right,
And we we named a lot of women whose Black
women whose voices emerged decades earlier in the fight for
(25:35):
abolition UM and women's rights and suffrage UM, and in
the eighteen eighties and nineties, and is when we really
see the development of these things called Black women's clubs,
and their heyday was really in the eighteen nineties, petering
off by about the nineteen twenties and thirties, and these
Black women's clubs had goals that were unique to African
(25:56):
American women. They weren't trying to ban together with white
stuff or just or white women's rights activists at this time.
This was an effort by black women to help each
other access higher education, participate in the suffrage movement. And
for the Black women who did join these groups, a
lot of them were divided into two camps, those who
(26:18):
did identify with the mainstream white suffrage organizations and those
who develop their own agendas in these black women's clubs. Yeah,
and and the fact that they formed these social clubs
that were it was more of grassroots organizing on a
local level and which did develop, as we'll talk about,
into national organizations. It makes so much sense when you
(26:38):
consider the context that this is happening in Rosalin Turborg.
Penn talks about this in her book African American Women
in the Struggle for the Vote of how after the
emancipation of slaves in the South in eighteen sixty three, quote,
the immediate priority of freed women was to find lost
loved ones and to establish viable households while attempting to
(26:59):
count her white terrorism. And we'll talk about that more
with the work of Ida b. Wells Um And she
said that freed women in particular were more likely to
see suffrage as a collective not an individual possession. And
to me, these social clubs are a reflection of that
unique perspective of saying, Hey, we need to you know,
(27:22):
build ourselves up, we need to build our communities up,
we need to organize on these local levels, especially because
by this time we're talking about in the eighteen eighties
and nineties, plenty of white suffers groups were completely turning
their backs on Black women. Yeah. And you know, these
these clubs, uh early on filled sort of a literary
(27:43):
and self improvement role for women in these various communities, um,
women who had been denied an education at college after
the Civil War. And in the eighteen nineties you really
start to see them turning from just social and literary
pursuits two more social justice and activism because you have
(28:03):
the demise of reconstruction, but the rise of Jim Crow. Yeah,
and I mean there's there's so much racism still simmering
clearly during this time. I mean, the Jim Crow era
is so notorious for that. And we have this merger
between three major national social clubs forming the National Association
(28:27):
of Colored Women Clubs due to this letter written by
James Jacks, who was the president of the Missouri Press Association,
which was challenging the respectability of African American women, referring
to them as thieves and prostitutes, to which women like
Mary Church Tyrrell, who was the first president of the
(28:47):
National Association of Colored Women's club said, oh, oh really, really,
Jack's no, And so they continued organizing and on a
national level, and founders of the inn A c WC
included women like Josephine Ruff and Harry Tubman, Margaret Murray Washington,
Francis C. W Harper, Ida Wells Barnett, and again Mary
(29:10):
Church Terrell, who I mean she was Terrell herself as
an incredible biography and um was educated at Oberlin. A
lot of these women actually ended up going to Oberlin because,
as we talked about in our Women's Colleges episode, that
was one of the first mainstream US colleges that was
open to not just women, but women of color as well.
(29:34):
And you mentioned Idabelle Wells who became Ida Wells Barnett.
She is a kind of an exciting character. She was
a journalist who gained fame in the mid eighteen eighties
by refusing to give up her train seat to a
white man and moved to a Jim Crow car. Chaos
and Sue's wells was dragged from the train. She hires
(29:55):
a lawyer to see the railroad. She won her case
in eighteen eighty four and received a settle meant um,
and although the railroad did appeal her case, she therefore
afterward earned a reputation as a very powerful voice against racism.
And she also her main focus for a long time
was anti lynching law. She by the eight nineties had
(30:18):
started this crustade sort of working among these various women's
clubs to draw attention to the issue. Yeah, and this
is because she was living in Memphis at the time,
and there was there were horrific cases of lynching happening.
And I think what finally spurred her into action was
a black man that she knew being killed by a
(30:40):
lynch mob. And um, speaking though, like really quickly about
that incident on the train, I I wish that that
was as common of an historical milestone, because it really
was a milestone as the story of Rosa Parks not
giving up her seat, Because when I read, I was like,
why why is this not in every single history book
(31:03):
as well? It seems like that, you know, her day
had a lot to do with it. She happened to
live in a time when women like Susan B. Anthony
and Elizabeth Katie Stanton Stanton, we're writing the feminist history books. Yeah, yeah,
absolutely and um in in two um she really established
her national reputation as being this person speaking out, but
(31:26):
being a woman in particular speaking out against lynching when
she publishes the book Southern Horror Lynching Law in all
its phases, and she even goes international with her crusade,
going over to Britain to talk about, Hey, this is
happening in the United States, we need to talk about it. Um.
In nineteen o nine, she also helped found the Double
(31:46):
A c P. Yeah, and you might not think it
could get any better than that. I mean, this woman
helped found the Double A CP. But her shining moment
came in nineteen thirteen when, after founding the Alpha Suffrage
Club of Illinois, was the largest Black woman's suffrage club
in Illinois. She she calls quite a stir at a
(32:07):
march uh the NAWSA, the National American Women's Suffrage Association
was marching in Washington, d C. But Black women were
told to march at the back, and you know, she
refused to comply. She leaves the parade site and everybody's like, oh, good,
she's gone. Not exactly. She waits until the parade starts
and she just ever so casually steps out of the
(32:31):
crowd and joins her sympathetic white colleagues from Illinois Bell
Squire and Virginia Brooks at the front of the parade
where you know, the press was there. They captured it
for eternity, and that press coverage did have an effect.
I mean it did sort of transmits the message to
a lot of black women that no, you have a
(32:52):
place in this Yeah, because we should know that. By
this time, the National American Women's Suffrage Association has re
orge together. Those two splinter groups have come back together
under the leadership of again Elizabeth Katy Santon and Susan B. Anthony.
But they they were choosy in terms of allowing or
(33:15):
not allowing black women to participate, which is part of
the reason why you know, you have the emergence of
these social clubs um and these black women specific suffrage organizations,
and uh, just the way that they the way that
they treated these black women who wanted to participate in
this massive march. It was getting all this attention, and
(33:37):
it wasn't all positive attention at all. I mean there
were a lot of hecklers in the crowd too, And
so the fact that Ida Wells did not care again
like on the train, was like, no, I'm not gonna
just like sit in the back. Um. But we should
also note to speaking of this parade, that in nineteen
o nine, a few years before, we have, in addition
(33:59):
to this social clubs emerging on college campuses, we have
the first African American sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha develop and
UM Delta Sigma Theta, which is one of the oldest
African American sororities, also marched in that nineteen thirteen in
a ws A parade with Ida B. Wells. And I
(34:21):
know that just in reading articles about it, because the anniversary,
you know, was last year. Um, that's a huge point
of pride for that sorority. Yeah. But around this time,
you know, there's a lot of kind of anger and
disillusionment among a lot of African American women who were saying,
we've been alongside you this whole time, you know, all
the way from the abolition movement into the suffrage and
(34:43):
women's rights movement, and now you're turning your backs on us.
And a lot of it, honestly, particularly with for instance,
that Washington, d c. Parade where Ida b. Wells was
told to get out. You know, a lot of these
white women suffrages were concerned about, you know, ankling the
Southern contingent. Yeah. For instance, there was this convention suffrage
(35:06):
convention happening in Atlanta, and this was a few years back,
and Susan Anthony was going to leave this convention and
Frederick Douglas wanted to attend, but she said, hey, yeah,
if you could just not come, that'd be really great
because we don't want to freak Southern women out. So yeah,
(35:26):
it was all an effort to focus solely on women's suffrage,
mostly white women's suffrage. Yeah, because at that point race
was seen as a liability to their cause if they
aligned themselves too much. Because one thing too, that we
should note is that the one of the main strategies
of the National American Women's Suffrage Association for getting the
(35:49):
vote was to go on a state by state basis,
so they needed to court Southern voters who you know,
we're we're living in that Jim Crow era, right, and
so they were honestly worried that the participation of black
women would jeopardize the passage of the nineteenth Amendment, which
did get passed in right right, and it's called the
(36:10):
Susan B. Anthony Amendment, as we've noted, UM. But one
thing too that I should have mentioned earlier when we
talked about that um splintering of the the mainstream suffrage
movement into the NAWSA led by Santon and Anthony and
then the American Women's Suffrage Association, which was supportive of
(36:31):
the fifteenth Amendment. That um Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin was
one of the founders of the a ws A, UM
who later went on to be one of the leading
members of the National Association of Colored Women, which was
that overarching organization for all of those social clubs. So
(36:53):
she's you know, it's just yet another name that is
left out largely of the nineteen o two history of
women's suffrage, which for so long has been like the
go to chronicle of the fight for Women's Vote in
the United States, co authored by Susan B. Anthony and
(37:14):
Stanton and a woman named Matilda Joscely Engage, and so
journal Truth is the only the only African American woman
mentioned in there. Yea, and that that omission, those multiple omissions,
um really discouraged a lot of people because these suffragists,
(37:34):
as we mentioned, a lot of these the white suffragists
were of more elite social standing, and so both black
women and working class white women kind of felt like, whoa,
you know, we were a part of this too the
whole time, and you've just used us as a stepping stone.
You know, it was great to have us when you
needed people to agitate on your behalf, but now you
(37:56):
know you're not helping us out. And you know, not
too long after nineteenth Amendment was past, black women were
effectively disenfranchised because of that Jim Crow era. Yeah, I mean,
and throughout this podcast that might be sounding like we're
trying to paint all of the white suffrage leaders that
you often hear about in history classes as just a
(38:18):
pack of racists that we you know, but it's that's
that's not the case. This is more telling the story
of how race and gender were really pitted against each
other during this time. I mean we we could move
on up the flagpole and talk about, hey, well, why
weren't the men in office just going ahead and taking
(38:39):
that word mail out of the fourteenth Amendment or out
of the fifteenth Amendment and granting universal suffrage. If universal
suffrage had been granted in the eighteen sixties, I wonder
what feminism would look like today, because you wouldn't perhaps
you would not have had this I don't want it
(39:00):
say dirty underbelly, but but just like the agitating for
one thing over another instead of putting them together and
arguing for women's rights and rights for African Americans right.
And and there have been some historical accounts to looking,
you know, taking a closer look at the primary documents
of the time and saying, okay, well, you know we're
(39:20):
Elizabeth Katy Stanton and Susan B. Anthony just outright racist,
and a lot of people saying no, it was really
a matter of funding and money and sort of being
painted into a corner. So, if if anything, from this conversation,
this is even more a testament to the work of
(39:42):
Harriet Tubman sojourn or truth, Mary Church Terrell, I to
b Wells and so on and so forth for continuing
in that pursuit of you know, the enfranchisement not only
of people of color, but also uh for for women,
for women's suffrage, and and it's also to why it's
unfortunate that their stories are not told more often. Absolutely
(40:06):
absolutely Now Unfortunately we you know, we could, We couldn't
even in one podcast give as detailed of a history
of black women in the suffrage movement during this era
as we would have liked. Um. So, if if you
want some further reading, and if you want to check
out our sources to learn more about these women that
we mentioned, you should head on over to Stuff I've
(40:28):
Never Told You dot com, where we'll have the podcast
posted and if you click on the link, it will
have all of the sources inside of that podcast Postum.
But we also want to hear from you. Were their
names that we left out? Um? I'm sure that there were.
What are your Has this changed your perspective on the
suffrage movement because again, we don't we don't want to
(40:50):
paint it in a negative light, but we need to
be a little more honest about it. Perhaps, sure, Yeah,
everything wasn't puppies and kittens and rainbows during a suffrage movement? Surprisingly, also,
Frederick Douglas, can we just like in terms of like
amazing dudes on the podcast? We should. If there is
a Sminty Men's Hall of Fame, he definitely deserves a place. Um,
(41:12):
so let us know your thoughts. Mom Stuff at Discovery
dot com is where you can send us your emails.
You can also reach us on Twitter at mom Stuff
podcast and on Facebook as well, and we've got a
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I've got a Facebook message here from Samantha about our
(41:34):
episode on paras social relationships and shipping called Fictional Attraction.
She writes, since my freshman year of college, I've gotten
deeper and deeper into myriad fandoms and ships from which
I hope to never emerge while meeting some truly amazing people.
I wanted to let you guys know, though, that your
definition of slash my primary interest is not correct. You
(41:55):
defined it strangely as pairings or fan fixed deals exclusively
with actors having sex, and I have no idea where
that definition came from. SLASH is simply pairings that are
same sex and usually male. As fem slash is used
to define female pairings, much of the fanfic associated with
slash is not sexually explicit, just as much of het
fanfic is very sexually explicit. There's a variety there, as
(42:19):
in every subsector of fanfic and fandom. Something else I
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(42:39):
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too think it's hot. I just wanted to put that
out there, maybe as another example of how slash shipping
and fandoms can be representative of larger issues and struggles.
So thanks Samantha for that insight. U fan fix Well,
I have a message here from Jessica about our episode
(43:02):
on Can Birth Control Kill You? She says, uh, I
noticed that you ladies didn't really touch much on the
adverse effects of birth control when taken with other medications
in the past. I was put on a drug for
anxiety and an oral contraceptive. All doctors involved knew about
all the drugs I was taking, but weren't aware of
any interactions. I eventually started having extreme dizziness and heart
(43:24):
palpitations that eventually led to a grand Mall seizure on
the sidewalk while heading to work. Even after that, no
one put together that it was the drugs that were
interacting negatively until four months later, when my gynecologist received
a heads up about new studies that showed heart problems
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(43:45):
could cause seizures and even death, but yet none of
my doctors knew about them. Good news is that I
went off the anxiety medication and am doing fine. Bad
news is that my mom recently called several pharmacies about
any potential interaction between the anxiety drug and oral contrast optives,
and they weren't well versed in these interactions. So thank
(44:05):
you so much for sharing your story. Jessica. I'm sorry
you had such a scary health emergency, but this is
just another example of how important it is to educate yourself.
You know, about the drugs you're taking, about any type
of medication you're taking, whether it's prescription or over the counter,
asking your doctor those important questions, and follow up, follow up,
(44:25):
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