Cw racism, xenophobia, discussions of slavery, misogyny and dom viol/second class citizeny for women
Like all movements in the United States, the Women's Suffrage movement is complicated. Also like all movements in the United States, it is extremely whitewashed and sanitized. If Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are who come to your brain when you think of the women's suffrage movement, its important to know that is by design. And full offense, they are over-credited and undeserving of their history's mark because it is well known they were white supremacists.
I once read a thoughtful post on facebook and I regret not taking note of by whom but it was a criticism of us as white Americans and who we chose to honor. While we could chose to honor anti-racists who actively worked to dismantle white supremacy, we instead honor slave-owners like George Washington, abhorrent colonizers and genocidal pillagers like Christopher Columbus and even racist women like Anthony and Cady Stanton. But this isn't because of a lack of better women, including Black and Brown women and white women who at least made their best effort to be anti-racist (none of us who are white are devoid of racism). Yet, to this day, the women's suffrage movement still centers Anthony and Cady Stanton.
In one part, it is probably because ultimately Anthony and Cady Stanton stand for the crux of what America is about: protecting the racial hierarchy. White women were undoubtedly marginalized by the system and this was truer the poorer they were. Bound to the sharp tongue and rule of their husbands, white women were subjected to second-class treatment, unable to vote, unable to own property and could not sign into contracts without a husbands permission. Many women were subjected to remain in marriages, even with horrific domestic violence, which is why the temperance, and later prohibition, movements are so strongly tied to suffrage. (Prohibition is also a complicated movement--and also is whitewashed and sanitized.) Despite this, though, many white women, like Cady Stanton and Anthony, were not so worried about the equity of all--instead, they yearned for their rightful place in a white supremacist society, so they thought, as to be equal to white men. And as long as they were equal to white men, it did not matter to them what happened to Black and Brown women.
But what's important to note is Cady Stanton was born to economic privileges, being the daughter of an attorney and then later the wife of the founder of the Republican party (Henry Stanton), Cady Stanton only saw through the lenses of a wealthy white woman. Very often, Cady Stanton would refer to the struggle of the "educated woman", which she meant to exclude poor white women and Black women, freed or not freed, due to the systemic denial of their access to equal education. Cady Stanton was also quite the writer and completed a six volume History of Women's Suffrage, co-produced by Anthony, Ida Harper and Matilda Gage.
History of Women's Suffrage is a large part of why Cady Stanton and Anthony, and their colleagues, remain the darlings of the movement. Volumes were released between 1881 to 1922.
These women centered the History of Women's Suffrage around their own work, with an organization known as National Women's Suffrage Association. Founded in May of 1869, the organization came to be after Cady Stanton and Anthony voiced their concerns over the American Equal Rights Association decision to support the Fifteenth Amendment. The Fifteenth Amendment was, of course, the amendment to the Constitution that enfranchised Black men. Cady Stanton, Anthony and their followers created NWSA, whereas the remaining members created American Woman Suffrage Association.
Cady Stanton does mention the word of AWSA and the women behind it--but only seldomly and not in a fond light--to further paint her and her group as the forefront of the suffrage movement.
Going back to 1866, the American Equal Rights Association was clear to focus, at least in intent, of the struggle faced by Black women, subjected to chattel slavery and discrimination. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper addressed the committee and said: "You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs. I, as a colored woman, have had in this country an education which has made me feel as if I were in the situation of Ishmael, my hand against every man, and every man's hand against me." Harper was clear to address issues that faced someone who was both Black AND woman, a concept we now know as intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989). As such, the AERA's intent was to fight for the rights of all Black people, including Black women, as well as the rights of all women, which would include Black women.
However, it was evident Cady Stanton and Anthony were weary of the idea of enfranchising anyone other than themselves. Early on in AERA's founding, they formed committees with a focus on what they said was "universal suffrage" Of course, universal suffrage is great! But it could be easily discerned that their primary intent was the suffrage of educated white women.
All of this came to head in 1867, when the AERA began to support the Fifteenth Amendment. Most of the members had full support behind them but Cady Stanton argued that she would only support it if a Sixteenth Amendment would follow that guaranteed the suffrage of women. She referred to the Fifteenth Amendment was an "aristocracy of sex". In this, we observe that Cady Stanton is unaware of (probably willingly) of her position in society as a wealthy white woman. All of the marginalization's that Cady Stanton faced was faced by Black women as well on top of the additional marginalization's Black women faced for being Black and poor, as most were. Further, Black men faced marginalization's that Cady Stanton would only dream of ever facing. Despite this, they were unwilling to concede on this point and that is when the dramatic shift occurred.
Cady Stanton took her writing to The Revolution with racial and classist language to express her frustrations. She also took to xenophobia when she wrote: "American women of wealth, education, virtue and refinement, if you do not wish the lower orders of Chinese, Africans, Germans and Irish, with their low ideas of womanhood to make laws for you and your daughters ... demand that women too shall be represented in government." Throughout the next couple of years, tension would mount between the members of the AERA.
Then came the alliance of George Francis Train. Train was an entrepreneur and a white supremacist Democrat. Cady Stanton and Anthony were willing to abandon their previously proclaimed beliefs against white supremacy and slavery to receive financial help from Train. Disgusted by this alliance, Lucretia Mott resigned from her post with the AERA in 1868. (Train was actually a Presidential candidate who had ran against President Lincoln in the election.)
But the climax ultimately came about in May 1869. In May 1869, Cady Stanton and Anthony's officership with the AERA was challenged when Stephon Symonds Foster (whose wife, Abby Kelley Foster is one of my favorite activists on record) stated their dedication to "Educated Suffrage" was at odds with the organizations stance on universal suffrage. Frederick Douglass then chastised Cady Stanton's anti-Black language in her work. At the time, the majority of the AERA agreed that the Fifteenth Amendment was in line with their mission and they supported it.
As such, the AERA saw its ultimate dissolution as the incapability in beliefs could no longer be reconciled. Cady Stantion and Anthony went onward to found the NWSA, where they continued to push for suffrage at a federal level through coded and sometimes direct xenophobic and racist language. Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and others formed AWSA.
The two groups continued to operate separately until the 1890's.
The AWSA focused more on state-by-state campaigns and was a single-issue campaign, focusing on suffrage, and no other issues. Their efforts were responsible for creating suffrage for women in Wyoming (1869) and Utah (1869).
The AWSA had many prominent members who deserve to be recognized for their suffrage work and who have been left out and ignored by history that continues to yield to Cady Stanton and Anthony as authority's on the work. Also, some women were not part of either group and still deserve recognition.
Black Women Leaders in Suffrage
Abby Kelley Foster
https://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/celebrate-womens-suffrage-dont-whitewash-movements-racism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Woman_Suffrage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Woman_Suffrage_Association
https://www.npr.org/2011/03/25/134849480/the-root-how-racism-tainted-womens-suffrage
https://www.wesleyan.edu/mlk/posters/suffrage.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/opinion/sunday/suffrage-movement-racism-black-women.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/06/04/how-racism-almost-killed-womens-right-vote/
https://www.splcenter.org/news/2019/06/01/weekend-read-challenging-whitewashed-history-womens-suffrage
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/womens-suffrage-leaders-left-out-black-women
