While this is probably historically correct, it is another attempt to divide women and liberals. Written by a MAN of course
27
You mean, by your headline, the way the (black) civil rights movement, particularly its black men, betrayed the women I. That movement?
24
The women's suffrage movement, as was the labor movement were designed to increase the power of white people.
The myth that the Civil War was fought to end slavery conceals the fact that the northern push was to diminish the economic power of the South. The North had no desire for freed slaves to move to the North and did everything in their power to prevent the migration of Black people north. The minimum wage and labor organizing were intended to prevent rural Negros from competing with northern white men.
Discrimination against minorities persists in northern and municipal unions. Check out the average compensation of a minority transit worker in NYC mass transit compared to a white man. Leftists get up in arms about women's wage disparity, disregarding differences in job choices and hours worked. But are not at all concerned that longshoreman and trucking unions like the teamsters have different compensation for different races.
10
As a Black woman, I always hesitate before I call myself a feminist because of feminism's racist past. Time and time again, White feminists have used Black women when it was convenient, only to turn on them when Black women were no longer needed.
Knowing the history of modern feminism, I have to admit that I don't trust White feminists. I don't blame them for being out for themselves, I just think Black women (and other women of colour) should follow their example. Let's put our needs first and not trust others to do it for us.
I think that's why BlackLivesMatter bothers so many people. They hate the idea of Black people doing for Black people because they don't know what's in it for them.
36
ALL heroes are less than heroic!! How did you get past your 13th Birthday and not know this. No matter how heroic we are we all have feet of clay. That the White Suffragettes weren’t perfect doesn’t mean they weren’t heroes.
25
History will repeat itself until education corrects itself. Why isn’t the documentary Eyes on the Prize taught in all junior high schools? Why do elementary schools gloss over black history with mere mentions of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King? Jim Crow laws are still embedded deep in the American psyche. Being born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1952, educated in an all white Catholic school, Sambo was my first introduction to black folk and when I saw the first black person at age five I yelled, Look mommy little black Sambo. My mom promptly whopped me with her purse.
22
I knew this history before and it never bothered me. Black men were not consi to be men so why would black women be considered women? So women of the 20th century were just as racist as the rest of their family and communities. Big deal!
Then the election of 2016 happened and 53% of White women voted for a documented a stupid racist and misogynist over an extremely qualified White Woman! I attended the first woman’s march but I didn’t have the stomach for the second. I have had it with White women! Don’t ever talk to me about solidarity and sisterhood ever again!
28
Anthony and Stanton understood all too well that giving black men the right to vote before women of any color placed women of every color at the very bottom of the American social order, even lower than recent slaves.
Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National Women Suffrage Association, cut to the heart of it: “You have put the ballot in the hands of your black men, thus making them political superiors of white women. Never before in the history of the world have men made former slaves the political masters of their former mistresses!”
As a matter of practical politics, she was absolutely right. And for this reason Anthony proclaimed: “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ask for the ballot for the Negro and not for the woman." Some overlook those last five words and take the statement to be venomously racist. Not so. She saw that white men were leaving women behind.
History confirmed her fears. The pecking order this country created was white men, black men, white women, black women. And black men had as much to do with the marginalization of black women as any white suffragette. So let’s be careful throwing stones, Mr. Staples.
35
Under Trump, the blacks are at record high employment. That is empowerment, to wit, a job that feeds you and your family. Thank you POTUS.
5
Perhaps Mr. Staples can next write a column addressing the rampant misogyny in black popular culture today. When we finally reach an era of perfect harmony, how will historians view hip-hop and its apologists?
33
Sir, you say: “Organizers need to keep that in mind as they commemorate a movement in which racism clearly played a central role. “
You are correct. Now, where are your articles about the rabid sexism, antisemitism, and homophobia that has yet to die its slow death in the Black Power and BlackLivesMatter movements?
42
let's throw stones at every hero in history; what a fun game? The self righteousness of this era, and glee in public shaming, is appalling.
29
As a White man who always sees women as equal, (my hero is my German Mother who survived a world war, 4 husbands and raised two troublesome boys in the 70's by herself and like my grand ma was the families strength and backbone, I find it very sad to see how quickly the 'don't tell us the unhelpful truths' squad react to any implication that THEIR heroes might be, like MLK, less than perfect.
The white women who complain here seem to quickly forget that THEY gave Trump a winning election percentage with his 56% of white women supporting him but of course it is only white men who can be criticized for this.
This is the same arrogance that put many of us off Hillary when she claimed, like princess, that it was 'her turn' to be POTUS without anyone having the right to point out the negative consequences of HER disastrous decisions as SOS, inc war crimes or her laughing at Quadaffi's trial less murder via bayonet sabotage.
This has got to stop. All groups have flawed individuals and we need the truth not this new anti 1st amendment attitude reflected in the DNC view that truths that hurt their elite is 'weaponized truth's (how Orwellian!) or even worse the idea that some deserve to NOT be scrutinized while others deserve to be demonized as a group without any consideration for the truth that we are all flawed individuals.
The fact is white women gained the same advantages as White men, when all the wealth and advantages were to be the exclusive property of Whites.
12
the civil rights movement in the 1960s did not include women in its leadership
male misogyny and female and male racism benefit only white males
15
In the USA, it is a historical fact that first white suffragists and later white feminists for the most part ignored the plight of black Americans - men and boys, women and girls.
Angela Davis has been pointing this out for what — the last half century?
https://quartzy.qz.com/1265902/why-im-giving-up-on-intersectional-feminism/
Read 'Women, Race, & Class' (1983) ISBN 0-394-71351-6
18
"The suffrage struggle itself took on a similar flavor, acquiescing to white supremacy — and selling out the interests of African-American women — when it became politically expedient to do so. This betrayal of trust opened a rift between black and white feminists that persists to this day"
This piece was about the mistreatment of black women suffragists, commenters.
By attempting to make it a contest between black men and white women, many of you continue to betray the trust between black and white feminists - I'm assuming out of political expediency. I'd hate to think it was pure spite.
8
I'm sure Native American women suffered as did black women but no mention of the indigenous people during the time of suffrage
12
‘Historians who are not inclined to hero worship … have recently provided an unsparing portrait of this … period. ... Stanton, the campaign’s principal philosopher, is exposed as a classic liberal racist who embraced fairness in the abstract while publicly enunciating bigoted views of African-American men,’
I can think of feminist white female liberals in higher education and elsewhere in the UK and the US who would have reared in horror at the idea they were racist, but tacitly – I believe – avoided closeness with people who were of a different colour or even a lower social class.
I sometimes think also of Orwell’s words, eighty years ago, in ‘Looking back on the Spanish War’: ‘ … between white and coloured workers there is not even lip-service to solidarity’.
8
My comment is in response to a lot of the defensive comments I have read here. History is not always friendly, and while the author is a black man he can still point out the fraction and short comings that led to the reinforcement of the self interests of white feminists. If you want to put up statues of them you need to point out their shortcomings as well. Those white feminists who were racist and benefited from it, don't get a free pass in history just because of the time period to which they belonged. Not all white feminists were racists, but their main platform was to push the agenda of the white feminist. This is a product of white feminists at the time, it doesnt have to be such of white feminists today. In order to move beyond those short comings of the past you need to recognize them and move foward in order to no longer repeat them. If you cast a fair light instead of only accepting a facade it shows you can be fair and move beyond the defensiveness that thwarts growth. It is a natural human state to become defensive when threatened, but it is not impossible to question it and become better people in spite of it. The choice is yours keep your head in the sand and bunker down, or grow up acknowledge the shortcomings and move forward.
17
This article is truth. As painful as it is to look into the mirror. Black women are not under an illusions, it hurts to know that 53% of white women voted for this man in office, voted for Roy Moore. It was the Black woman that kept him out of office, while you feign being "threatened" by our Black sons, brothers and husbands in Starbucks, the park, the pool, cutting the grass etc. You don't want equality, you want your piece of White Supremacy.
22
This is so complex and such a compicated historical time. And women still did not get the vote in Stanton's lifetime--no matter what compromizes were offered. Black males could vote, women could not. What a poltical mess.
8
Yes, our treatment of black men has been and remains indefensible. They have been brutalized for nothing more than the color of their skin. And since time immemorial, women have been raped and murdered for nothing more than their gender. They have been considered the spoils of war, they have been enslaved for male sexual pleasure, they have been burned alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands and murdered for "dishonoring" the men in their families. The author has a selective and biased view of oppression that serves neither African Americans nor women well. As others have stated, it's not a competition.
23
Staples takes a Stanton quote completely out of context and claims that she's a racist because she characterized Black men as "Sambos."
Since he doesn't supply the quotation I will. Stanton, an educated woman, said this:
"Think of Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung who do not know the difference between a monarchy and a republic, who never read the Declaration of Independence, or Webster's spelling book, making laws for Lydia Marie Child, Lucretia Mott or Fanny Kemble...."
Hans? Patrick? She obviously isn't making a distinction on the basis of race, or even characterizing Black men as "Sambos." She's using stereotypical names to identify uneducated men - European and Asian as well as Black - and protesting their being given the right to vote, and therefore control of women's lives. Calling uneducated Irish immigrants Paddy was an insult, especially when you bear in mind that it was a crime in Ireland, under penal law, for Catholics to learn to read or own land, so many Irish immigrants were indeed completely illiterate and frankly ignorant. But Stanton doesn't use the word Paddy - she says Patrick - a stereotypical Irish name, common among the Irish men who came over on the coffin ships, starved, angry and (through no fault of their own) illiterate. We wouldn't call him that today. We'd just say "low information voter."
Brent Staples, seriously, can you not understand the rage of an educated person who has been denied the right to participate in the government?
36
When I first read of the bigotry of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and later Alice Paul, I was appalled. The former two’s overt anger at the enfranchisement of African American males changed my view of them forever.
In my opinion, the only almost pure white leader in American history pre the civil rights era was Abraham Lincoln. Yes, I know his statements in Southern Illinois but as LBJ later said to James Farmer when Farmer mentioned Johnson’s past public statements, “I needed to get elected first.” His actual statement was “I am going to quote a friend of yours and you will instantly understand it. Free at last. Free at last. Thank G-d almighty I am free at last.”
2
The belief that it was ok for black men to be sexist for political expediency because the violence done to black men was/is so extreme, but white women being racist for political expediency is "pernicious" because women only needed the vote for "symbolic parity" and that, as a result, we should think twice before honoring those women, is blatant male supremacy and misogyny.
36
Well, let's see. Suffragettes in their quest for the vote betrayed black women. Feminists in their pursuit of equal pay and birth control betrayed lesbians. Gay men who wanted full marriage right snubbed lesbians who wanted other kinds of protections.
Liberals betray moderate Democrats, radical evangelicals betray moderate Republicans . . . .
Celebrities like Al Sharpton betray middle-class blacks, privileged actresses like Cynthia Nixon betray middle-class New Yorkers, and sociopaths like Donald Trump betray everyone just for the fun of it.
7
Same old story. All the good people were/are black. All the bad people were/are white. All the white people were/are inherently complicit. All the black people are victims but nonetheless heroes. Carry on.
20
Margaret Sanger is another feminist hero who deserves closer historical examination. Starting Planned Parenthood and advocacy of abortion wasn't just to provide an escape for an unplanned pregnancy, it also was to fulfill her vision of eugenics where "undesirables" or those who were malformed or a drag on society would be removed from the gene pool. This extended to her view of black people.
"We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population..."
-- Letter to Dr. Clarence J. Gamble, December 10, 1939, p. 2
7
Many Union soldiers that gave their lives so black folks could be free may have been considered racists. Do we diminish their sacrifice and that of their families?
13
When can we expect the Times to publish the companion piece to this article: A discussion by a white women of black men's betrayal of black women?
23
Brent Staple's your get off to a bad start by telling us that Stanton was a classic liberal racist, sending us to a short 2009 New Yorker article that does not even contain that phrase. I doubt very much that the concept "classic liberal racist " had been invented in Stanton's time so why did you use it.
I can only speculate that you as a conservative of some kind want to make sure that readers understand that 21st century liberals (in Sweden we can declare that by joining the Liberal Party) are perhaps as flawed as Stanton.
You did not need to bother since George Yancy in his NYT letter (Dear White America) in a 2015 Stone column declared that if the USCB says you are "White by law" you are a racist. (My 1932 birth certificate states 'color white').
Just tell us the facts, forget the lazy labelling.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
5
Nothing like cherry picking and twisting facts. The 1913 parade had the black contingent march at the back because they showed up unannounced. The black organizer left them to march alone while she joined her own state contingent. Sojourner Truth was opposed to black men getting the vote without the women also getting the vote, stating she had no desire to remain a slave to black men. Guess she was a racist also. As far as "Sambo" calling, who knows the context? Remember that even into the 1950's, little black Sambo was simply a hero in a child's story that takes place in India. It was written in 1899 by a Scottish woman.
16
We have always known that whites prefer not to see any interpretation of history which conflicts with their half baked rosey viewpoint. We simply need to accept the fact that even today, many so-called white feminists are bigots. Truth be told, it's always been that way. Hillary Clinton, stood up in front of the world and referred to black youth and super preditor drug dealers. Where did those drugs come from? Our youth we're preyed upon, by this society and the drug cartels. The bottom line truth is that "feminism" has failed African American women. It's easier for a white woman from Ireland or Scotland to get a job on Bloomington TV than it is for an African American women whose family has been in the US for 5 generations. That says it all to me. Sorry if the truth hurts anyone's feelings.
13
Speaking as a brown, woman I think it's important to view social rights movements from the past in the light of the time, not modern times. Of course feminism failed women of color: by today's standards, many suffragette-era feminists were probably racists. Most black people of the time were probably sexists. That doesn't devalue feminism, or the civil rights movement. The idea of intersectionalism and a widespread social justice movement aimed at destroying prejudice generally is a modern idea, and still incomplete. The last thing most Americans want - even most feminists - is real social justice, since that'd mean sharing the planet's wealth equally. What they really want is social justice in the confines of a supremely wealthy nation state, where their standard of living is generally preserved. Maybe in a generation or two, that'll seem antiquated too, and we'll be chattering about how feminism failed poor nations, or Islam.
13
And again women who were oppressed and put their lives on the line are being judged by 21st century standards. Everyone must now be perfect in order to survive the new purity standards.
Do I wish all was good and pure, of course, was that or is that possible NO. men torpedoed the rights of women...all women.. let’s not forget that.
Black men and white men didn’t want women to vote. Douglas was an outlier. He was amazing but he too was not perfect.
Could we stop rummaging in the past to smear everyone and work on the future?
16
With the majority of white women throwing their support behind Donald Trump, and helping him get elected this new generation can finally see that no much has changed.
9
The top 4 or 5 recommended comments are all indignation, resorting to whataboutism regarding the civil rights movement or black men or whatever. It really makes the author's point for him that all these outraged self-identified white feminists seem to completely ignored the issue at hand: black women. It's almost as though they are proving the author's point.
How is a "feminist" movement truly feminist when it does not represent the interests of all women? This goes for race and wealth. Perhaps some of these self-identified feminists could spare a few moments from their striking back to consider perhaps their particular definition of "women's issues" is not really for all women.
13
Staples may can say he faces special discrimination because he's African American. I'll give him that. But he still has his man card, and like many men of ALL races and cultures, he chooses to use it to divide women, to turn sister against sister. Conquer and divide, right Mr. Staples? But those few of us who know history know that men got the right to vote half a century before women.
I truly hope women won't fall for this mean trick.
We know men enslave our sisters the world over, forcing mere girl children into sex slavery, arranging marriages between 12 year old girls and 40 year old men, preventing females from getting an education and mandating containment through all sorts of methods, clothing not the least of which. So stop the 'racism is worse than sexism' canard. Black men can be just as misogynist as Indian men as Asian men as Middle Eastern men. Male oppression of women doesn't depend on skin color--men distribute it equally to ALL women.
19
If you're looking for a textbook example if how power operates to pit those under its thumb in opposition to one another, the comment section in response to this article is a gold mine. A historically accurate account of how whiteness infused even a movement for women's liberation generates indignation, anxiety and attacks on the black civil rights movement....while white patriarchy gets a pass. White guys like me can continue to sleep soundly knowing our privilege faces no real threat in our lifetimes (the protests of today's right wing culture warriors notwithstanding). Wake up people.
5
Ugh, all I see here is yet another man lecturing progressive women en masse on their perceived faults, even if they're one hundred years in the past. I see no color here, only gender. It's oppressing and deeply distressing.
With the unprecedented attack underway RIGHT NOW on the rights of all people who are not white heterosexual Christian males, your attempt to divide progressive women by race only serves their purpose: to divide and conquer us all.
21
As proof of this discrimination, I took a slew of Women's Studies courses in college and never once heard of any black women speaking up for women's right to vote. Sad to know that their voiced were stifled, but nice to know that they tried to be heard. (I don't know what was wrong with the people who said, "You, yes, but you, no!" I mean, everybody should be allowed to register to vote, and to vote. Duh!)
1
What did happen to the strong black women who kept their families together?
How does one explain the current statistic that more than 70% of the births to black women are out of wedlock?
(Not that the national out-of-wedlock rate, at over 40%, is that much better.)
2
Never blame one oppressed group for the oppression of another. This is THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT of activism, and it was violated in this article and it is violated in many of the comments below. It is a hard commandment to obey perfectly, but Staples is in flat out breaking it, and he will burn on pyre of Mao Red Books for all eternity. Please, divide and conquer is a hackneyed strategy, and Staples is hurting both blacks and women with this pseudo-erudition. I think I'll write a black male check to Planned Parenthood today.
16
It seems to me that a huge failing of both the feminist and civil rights movements was their failure to give black women an equal seat at the table. I hope that our current movements will not make the same mistake.
5
As a waking up old white guy, I have learned that mine is not the only privilege. Who ever has any privilege stands in a field of cow patties just waiting to step in one. If the moral s dilema of my privilege has taught me anything it has taught me to try and listen, listen way past when I want to be done listening. Because that is when I begin to see the cow patties in to which I keep stepping. Rather than sanctify the actions of my sufaget women ancestors I would do well to “listen” to this African American man and appreciate my ancestors flaws and be willing to live with them (as my descendants will).
2
Since when are all of us such snowflakes that we don’t understand the concept of interest group? If we are offended by interest groups pursuing their own interests, then no wonder U.S. democracy is threatening to capsize.
What’s really important now, NYT, is voting this November — the ONLY way we can avert this lying oligarch from consolidating his power for decades to come. Call him crazy, but he’s on his way to solidifying HIS interests, while Obama during the same period in office did not.
If you want to continue Balkanizing progressive intent, the weakened result come Midterms will be on your head. Do you know where we are right now?
5
Something bothers me about this column. I wonder sometimes if we have all gotten it terribly wrong. Given the fact that Progressivism is in decline worldwide and has been suffering electoral defeats here for decades maybe we need to stop talking about race entirely. Maybe the last thing we need are conversations about race. It seems it is just preaching to a cheering choir and alienating everyone else and encouraging a kind of white tribalism that makes racism worse. I think it is clear given a choice between the slogans “Make America great again” and “America you’re a racist pig” which one the white American voter will choose, voters we need voting for Democrats.
Surely, we can celebrate triumphs in our history like the 19th amendment without having to be reminded that Suffragettes like everyone else at the time were prejudiced. It is not news to most Americans that racism pervaded America throughout its history and it is condescending of Mr. Staples and Liberals like him to think that it is. We need to be concerned about the future and not the past and we have to start thinking about ways to talk about race that are less accusatory, that take into account the reality of the times people lived in, and most importantly that don’t sacrifice a future free of racism for the momentary pleasure of self-righteously pointing fingers.
We need to start emphasizing how we are the same and need to love each other, not how we hurt and hated each other in the past.
4
Julia Grant, wife of president U.S, was raised on a slave holding farm and maintained "sesesh" sympathies her entire life. She became friends post Civil War with Varina Davis, wife of Confederate president Jefferson. They both supported the suffragette movement.
1
Brent - White women did not betray black women, and that headlining only hurts all women. All women and all lives matter - and the divide and conquer mentality of some segments is ridiculous and unproductive. Move forward - united together. The women's movement is for all women and helps all women. That was and is and always will be the intent and so come together for the benefit of all to make the world a better place for all.
2
What a revolting piece of drivel.
The author is actually cautioning against celebrating women obtaining the right to vote 100 years ago because some of the women leading that movement may have been racist. I've searched but have yet to find any article by Brent Staples (or anyone else) that cautions against celebrating the achievements of the civil rights movement because some of the men leading it (MLK, Malcolm X) may have been sexist.
It is also odd for a black man to be complaining about white women given that a) black men got the vote before women, b) a black man got to be president before any woman did.
In some ways, sexism and racism are different. Black people are a class AND a community, whereas women are just a class - our communities and families always include men, and we are all races, so solidarity is more challenging. The author clearly sees this and is trying to divide us.
I don't really expect men of a 100 years ago - or even 50 years ago - to not have been sexist. I don't expect white people of 100 years ago not to have been racist. These things are systemic. I am impressed with those who managed to transcend it enough to work for change, but I would never imagine them to have been perfect or "woke" by today's standards.
One thing one CAN say for sure, is that black women have had the worst of both kinds of oppression. For a black man to use their suffering as a stick to beat white women with is shameful.
30
Not at all surprised, when I found out the history of Ms. Anthony and the other suffragists.
That's why to this day I don't consider them heroes in the slightest. They were just as bigoted as the White males running the United States of America back then.
2
Great piece. Looking forward to the sequel- how organizations like Planned Parenthood and the Democratic Party have failed Black women.
3
At that time, early 20th century, to allow black men the vote before women of ANY color, speaks volumes about sexism, and less about racism.
10
This is a brilliantly-written article that misses the entire point of the women's suffrage movement. One has to tackle one problem at a time, not mix in suffrage with racism with unfairness, etc. Had the blacks been whites, they would have done the same thing as the whites: first, in this hypothetical scenario, suffrage for black women with white women waiting at the back of the line; then suffrage forty-five years later in 1965 for white women under the Civil Rights Act. THEN, tackle latent anti-white racism, and in that order.
After Charlottesville last year, many ignorant Revisionists wanted to rewrite history, tear down monuments and denigrate (notice the morphology of this word; do you want to ban it, Revisionists?) former Confederate leaders. I believe this Brent Staples wants to do the same thing. The point is, everyone is trying to protect his piece of the pie. What's good for me? As there is so much 'Mea Culpa' in the white camp today, smart alecs like Mr. Staples or Barack Hussein Obama are trying to exploit white guilt to obtain more goodies for their group. Thank Trump for being the businessman he is and for seeing past all this leftist, anti-white racist malarkey and for trying (no salary for Trump by the way) to improve the lot of EVERYONE with a strong economy, strong borders, 3.8% unemployment (=0 unemployment) and a no-nonsense foreign policy.
1
A question: How many white women spoke up or otherwise advanced the cause of abolish and/or enfranchisement of Black men? And how many free Black men spoke up or otherwise advanced the cause of women’s suffrage and/or the Equal Rights Amendment?
Black WOMEN very may criticize the women’s suffrage movement, but IMHO Black men, or men who are Black should refrain from trying to speak for their perfectly-able sisters. And stone for their fairly unacknowledged Sexism that unfortunately lives on to this day.
How about organizing your brothers to support and advocate for a full-throttle ERA — especially in the (coming) era of ultra right wing “Originalist” judges who believe that there is NO guarantee of equal rights for female human beings enshrined in our US Constitution, and will adjudicate anti-female discrimination accordingly? That would be a better you of your time, intellect and copious skills in writing than was this woman-shaming opinion piece.
10
SO WHAT?
It was progress.
One fight against prejudice helped the other, in fact if not in the heart of every participant.
Every time I see uber-correct complaints like this op-ed, or words like "intersectionality" and "white privilege" in these comments, I WANT TO VOTE FOR TRUMP.
8
“The Racism Behind Women’s Suffrage” completely ignores that the Women’s Suffrage movement and those very leaders you accuse as being bigots and racist were the force behind abolition, endangered their lives in operating the Underground Railroad, and were it not so, Frederick Douglass would not have been at the 1848 Women’s Convention in Seneca Falls, NY, which began as a labor movement, pushing the women to include voting rights in the Declaration of Sentiments. The feeling was that once emancipation was achieved, women would also be given the right to vote along with African-Americans. Interesting you do not attack Douglass for his political expediency in failing to also push for women’s suffrage in the 15th Amendment. And by the way, where is the amendment which gave men without property the right to vote, which was also a requirement of the Constitution, but nonetheless, enabled Andrew Jackson to win the presidency in 1828? The women who fought for abolition felt betrayed.
And if you take your column to its fullest conclusion, it sounds like you are suggesting that only Black American suffragettes should be honored with monuments.
14
Looking back through the lens of the year 2018, it’s easy to forget (or dismiss) how brutal conditions were back then. Women were not even considered human. That attitude persists today. This article mines both the racial divide and misogyny, at the huge cost of women’s unity with the rest of humanity.
6
So we shouldn't care that women got the vote because it only helped middle class white women? What's the alternative, until racism is totally eliminated, the vote for women is unimportant? Let women remain second class citizens because racial inquality still exists? (a) I think that it is necessary to examine the racism of sufragettes (who reflected attitudes that were widespread at the time) and (b) geting the vote for women, even if it was only incremental progress, was still a good thing we should celebrate.
10
A clear eyed view of what is real is essential to understanding what is going on. But a clear eyed view of most really progressive policies that have improved people’s lives and laws which have resolved great wrongs were accomplished by very flawed human beings, even including people who did not agree with the better purposes of them. It’s important to strive to achieve objectives that produce better outcomes than to be concerned about the motives of those who will provide support.
Sadly, racist views were common amongst Americans even when there were great improvements in equality and democracy. Andrew Jackson advanced democracy greatly even though he was clearly a racist. Lincoln struggled with the most shameless political manipulation to convince Congress to outlaw slavery. FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy tolerated Southern Segregationists even as they supported popular progressive programs and improved equality with mixed government and private programs. The final reckoning over Civil Rights split the Democratic Party and led to the beginning of the undoing of democracy and equal opportunities beginning with Reagan’s reactionary takeover of the Republican Party. The trend of undoing all the acts of the last two centuries which brought a country in which any who worked hard and smart would have at least a modestly affluent life proceeded to now, where hard working people can be impoverished again, as in the gilded age.
1
It is difficult to judge the motives of people active in the abolition and suffrage movements in the 19th century within the context of 21st century culture. Stanton understood very well that the condition of slaves was not different from the condition of white women. The 15th amendment was a bitter surprise, a betrayal perpetrated by white men against their mothers, sisters, and daughters. One must not forget that white liberal men, have supported both feminism and racial equality. Their intervention has been most important. In judging motivation, for whatever reason, Frederick Douglass opposed the attack on Harpers Ferry while women, members of John Brown's family, joined the group that included white and black conspirators.
2
For a fuller exploration of racial and moral compromises of the suffragists--and to put these decisions and tensions in context--may I suggest a recent book: The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight for the Vote (Viking/Penguin RandomHouse)
It is unfortunate that Brent Staples in trashing the suffragettes because they didn’t or couldn’t be as forward thinking as some of us in the 21st century, continues to act like the rest of the males who have a perch in the hierarchy of today’s world: no problem pointing out the mote in the other person’s eye or standing on their head to feel taller.
In our day many people feel perfectly justified in curbing the control of one’s own body for the female half of the population on the basis of a religious view of the fetus. But a person is not free in any real sense if they are legally prevented from living according to their own beliefs — like the Hobby Lobby worker who can’t afford insurance to cover birth control and is forced to go without because her employer doesn’t believe in it! In the same way, black men and women could not use the vote when they were required to answer esoteric questions before proceeding, or getting a government ID from a location 50 miles from home, or having a polling station moved on the morning of a vote to someplace unknown. All of these go around “the expressed purpose of the law.” Let’s hear some columns on today’s battles for equality instead of telling us the limitations of yesterday’s heroes.
3
I knew there were many reasons why I never got involved in the women's movement. It only seemed to address the needs of a certain group of women. If you read works like the Feminist Mystique, they seem very limited and dated, and written mainly for middle class white women. It even took MeToo a while to "trickle down" to working class women. So all movements seem to be more about who they exclude than include. My best friend is gay, and she says gays would have no rights at all if there were not so many rich white gay men. But has gay marriage helped single, minority gay teens who are living on the streets? Has this picture changed in 6 years? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/10/netherland
1
OK, these humans were not perfect, and alas, all to human. Yet, they did good things, supporting the drive for women's rights. Perfect, no? yet, worthy of celebration and remembrance. It is not "vital" that all their warts also be remembered; to what end. Journalists and armchair quarterbacks are free to sit back and throw darts a century later, if they wish to engage in mental games and self righteousness.
4
Brent thank you for speaking this hard truth, I love hearing your voice at the NYT. It is especially important today, at a time when liberals are again selling out on important issues because they don't wish to offend their wealthy benefactors. Please keep up the great work, I hope to see more of your columns in the future.
I hope that the lives of writers like the one who wrote this article are held to the same extremely strict standards they hold historical figures to. The sheer amount of self-righteousness is honestly shocking; how can somebody believe the life they live is so pure that they can condemn most everybody else?
6
I teach gender studies, and there is a lot in this piece that is factually incorrect. There certainly was racism in the suffrage movement, as in later feminist movements, and it was used for political leverage.
But, as one example, going back to Abigail Adams who wrote to her husband while drafting the Declaration of Independence, "all men would be tyrants if they could," and women "will foment a revolution" if not given "voice or representation." She spoke for all women.
1st wave feminists began as *abolitionists*. When the Civil War ended, the right to vote and to own property was given to men regardless of national origin, race, or previous servitude, all women were furious that "sex" was left out of the 15th amendment because they'd been fighting for equal rights for ALL.
But long after Stanton began in the 1840s, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns asked black women to march at the back of the line (1910s in from of Wilson's White House). A horrible, disgusting act of racism. (A tradition that continued to 2nd wave feminism in the 1970s.)
Their view was that they didn't want to alienate southern voters and the end justified the means. They were willing to die for the cause of suffrage, literally, and not only so white women could vote.
Other women's movements have alienated gay women for the same reason. More oppressed groups historically, sadly, feel pressured to choose between black/woman, woman/gay or black/gay, etc. but not because those in the movement are racists.
7
Historians who are not inclined to hero worship - I want to be use this in a manuscript one day. The shade is priceless!
1
Thank you for pointing out that Northern women acted in their own self interest rather than leverage the movement to include ALL women.
Apparently racism existed outside of the South after the war....image that!
3
Pardon my skepticism, but I’d feel more faith in an article claiming virulent racism among the leaders of the Suffrage movement if the writer had chosen to quote even one of the women involved instead of exclusively quoting writers with issues against them.
11
Would that Mr. Staples address the problem of misogyny in hip hop music. Often when I visit my health club on the Upper West Side of New York, I am assaulted by it. Given the prevalence of misogyny in music produced by men of color towards all women, this essay by a man of color criticizing suffragist heroes from 100 years ago feels inappropriate.
19
For a group of people who like to be known as Progressives, I marvel at how it seems you can focus so keening on the negative side of history. Remember, when our Founding 'White' Fathers wrote the preamble to the Constitution, they said: " . . to establish a MORE perfect union. . ." (my emphasis). We are not there yet, but everyday, Trump aside, we seem to be getting closer and closer to that utopia.
1
Frederick Douglass was perfectly content to allow women to remain in the background, as long as it was 'men' who got the vote. It wasn't just white women whom he betrayed, it was black women also.
This article is a perfect example of "Manwashing" history.
There are plenty of articles available through your local library and online, through reputable sources.
Only men would think it wise to try and pit women against each other. We are onto you.
11
There's a lot of American history like this that needs to be retold for historical accuracy.
1
According to the Census Bureau, women are 50.8 per cent of the population of the United States, a majority.
However the New York Times regular op-ed columnists are so far from gender equality that it would be laughable for what considers itself the national newspaper if it weren't so unfair and unjust, not to mention harmful to the national discourse.
The Times has twelve "regular columnists" whose work appears, well, regularly. Of these, nine are men and only three are women. Why is that when women are a majority in America?
When it comes to the gender of the occasional columnists and op-ed writers, the numbers are pretty shocking.
For example, I carefully counted the names of all the people who wrote editorial columns or articles for the month of June 2018, because I was curious.
There were 95 pieces by men and only 12 by women!
This is unacceptable to me as a woman, because it means that half of the American citizenry is grossly underrepresented in the national conversation -- not only in this newspaper but almost everywhere you look.
Women's thoughts and voices desperately need to be heard in this time of national peril. We have different experiences and different concerns than men do.
We need parity in culture, too, particularly in making films and television that so powerfully shape our ideas of what it is to be human, what it means to male and female.
Feminism is obviously still much needed in our nation, and the Staples' piece only fans the flame of sexism.
19
Nice job dividing women and discrediting feminism.
This is how the extreme right wins - by dividing everyone else.
Thanks for helping them out.
16
Call me bitter, but free Black MEN were allowed to vote for a time in the 1700s and in 1870, while NO WOMAN was allowed to vote until 1920 — a full 40 years or at least 2 full generations later.
Jump ahead to the 21st century, and a Black MAN won a major party’s nomination for a Presidential run prior to any female candidate, and (obviously) a Black MAN was elected to the highest office in the land at least a generation before ANY FEMALE will be.
So, while the women’s suffrage movement suffered from harmful lack of inclusivity, forgive me for finding it a bit irritating hearing a man complaining about it!
17
People...too many of us are responding to this piece by "taking and creating sides." It is a fact that slavery and its deadly and unjust legacies are built in to our system and are alive and well today. It is a fact that women do not have equal rights and that misogyny is built in to our system and is alive and well today. It is a fact that LGBTQ people do not have equal rights and that discrimination is alive and well today. It is a fact that the disenfranchisement of different groups has led to what we are seeing in many of our own responses to this piece. And guess what? Those that historically created this travesty and who are currently investing their billions to maintain and further the status quo are reading this with sanctimonious glee. To those of you who might be here to sow dissent get lost. To everybody else wake up please. We all have serious grievances. We all have a lot to share and understand. We all have a lot to learn about history, ourselves, and each other. We are all losing ground quickly. We don't have much time.
6
This column is a cheap shot. I find it increasingly difficult to assign any credibility to progressive historical revisionists who seemingly will not be satisfied until every major advance in US history is painted with a racists brush. Why is the far left obsessed with diminishing everyone we admire? At a certain level it's very revolting. The people fighting for women's rights in the 19th century were fierce opponents of slavery. That is historical fact. Anthony may not have been "woke" by 2018 standards but she was committed to social equality for all women. She headed the New York American Anti-Slavery Society. She organized meetings throughout the state under banners that read "No compromise with slaveholders. Immediate & Unconditional Emancipation. Stanton may have made ill advised compromises but her commitment to fighting for equality for all is beyond dispute. Stanton addressed various issues pertaining to women beyond voting rights. Her concerns included custody rights, property rights, employment & income rights, divorce, the economic health of the family, & birth control. Stanton firmly believed in a universal franchise that empowered blacks and whites, men and women. Speaking on behalf of black women, she stated that not allowing them to vote condemned African American freed women "to a triple bondage that man never knows," that of slavery, gender, and race. We can proudly celebrate these women & ignore those who are trying to denigrate their accomplishments.
15
Amelia Boynton Robinson was a leader for getting African American women the right to vote. You know how? On the Pettus Bridge crossing Selma to Montgomery, March, 1965, and among other venues.
I wonder what would have happened if there never would have been a Martin Luther King, Jr. The suffragettes from Seneca Falls might have been leaders, and we honor them, but we do need to indeed ask ourselves, wasn’t getting the right to vote for white women easier indeed?
Go walk the bridge in Selma. Visit the Selma Interpritive Center and the other center along the march’s path. Now that was working to get women’s votes; men’s too. And it took until 1965 to do it! Long after white suffragettes.
2
All things work together for good,
to those who love the Lord.
2
If you are a decent historian, you have to ask yourself where are the roots to any present day cultural phenomenon. And if you notice white racism, you want to understand how it operates, and the tendrils of linkage across centuries. If you read this very strong piece and can’t see how the racism of white women played a role in where we stand today because your feminism is threatened by such a recognition, I question your commitment to understanding why we are where we are.
2
Mr Staples, people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
While what you print may be true, remember in the 1860s Douglass was for the amendment for blacks to vote but not women. He wisely listened to Lincoln to "get what you need, not what you want". It forever ended the friendship between Douglass and white women suffragists.
Lincoln and Douglass knew that America was ready to give some black men the vote after their brave and heroic sacrifices in the Civil War but not yet for women.
History has taught us progress comes very slow. No-one person is perfect. Many consider Lincoln the greatest leader in the modern area in the last 1,000 yrs. He saved us all and the first democracy in 2,500 yrs., ended the evil of slavery and gave his life for the cause, killed because he was ready to give some Black men the right to vote. Yet, he was a technical racist, saying in the Lincoln Douglas debates blacks are not equal to whites although he started to change towards the very end of his life with his relationship with Douglass.
Don't cherry pick, ax grind or finger point Mr. Staples. Admit when greatness occurs even though today these leaders would be considered flawed.
9
Feminism is a movement to improve legal conditions for women. It is not a movement to make heaven on earth for all humans. Many feminists work with groups whose activities seek to improve conditions for racial minorities, immigrants, killer whales. Indeed, the higher priority that many influential women give to causes like that is one reason feminism's goals are achieved at such a glacial pace.
Women should not be expected to put their aspirations on hold until perfect justice is achieved for everybody. In fact, that is exactly what men always demand; that women put themselves last, and subordinate and sacrifice their own interests to the good of all.
Forget it. There are many other, very well-funded, politically powerful movements that pursue justice for racial minorities, immigrants, killer whales and the rest. Feminism is for women. Men should stop telling women what their goals should be.
9
this is a depressing article, just as that would be the case for a post proclaiming black men sold out all women in the post civil war by getting the cote for themselves without insisting on it for women.
Racism and misogyny still exist today but nowhere as much as it once did, and emphasizing one at the expense of the other only helps those who are still OK with racism and misogyny. I say celebrate all those who fought racism even if they held some misogynist views of the time, and all who fought misogyny even if they held some racist views of the time. If we wanted perfection we'd still have slavery and votes only for men.
At least the 19th Amendment gave to the vote to ALL women, and let us celebrate those that made it hap[pen even with their diverse motives and attitudes.
5
One other thought.
"betrayal" implies there was an alliance to begin with.
There wasn't. There was no betrayal. There was indifference to the plight of black women. Just as there was indifference to the plight of black men. Yes, the slave holders morphed their indifferent racism into racist hatred.
But there was no betrayal because there was no alliance between blacks and white to begin with. That's just a fact.
We cannot ignore racism. It is part of our history. It is an ugly part of our history.
But it is not the only part of our history and truth be told, it is not the most important part of our history to whites. It may be so for blacks, and the is both rational and understandable.
I don't know where the boundary lines are with regard to the treatment of historical figures who either were racist or who were indifferent to racism. Those figures are celebrated for accomplishments that have reverberated for the betterment of generations since their time. That is also real and worth pondering.
Let's agree that America's history must include the history of racism to be honest.
Let's also agree that to view the accomplishments of those dead white men and women solely through the lens of slavery, Jim Crow, and racism is intellectually dishonest. It may satisfy an emotional need, but it certainly isn't intellectually honest, nor does it accomplish very much today.
4
Liberal racism is still very common. It exists among men and women of all races. Yet, all progress toward a more equitable society has come through liberals. Even when these liberals labeled as something else at the time, they pursue liberal policy and thus are liberal.
The good news, is that you can talk to liberals and work on bringing them to enlightenment. Try that with the cult of Trump.
Unfortunately part of what the old power structure did was to pit the poor and disenfranchised against each other. They still do it today and in fact this is why the republicans southern strategy is so effective. The poor whites who should vote liberal in order to improve their lives, vote for an authoritarian master who really only represents the 1% because they are willing to trade their own life improvement for the belief that there is someone lower than them. Of course, that is not true, because there is no one lower than those who willingly accept a king.
2
I think pretty much every good historical moment in our American history can get a notation: "Well, good if you were white." I think it's good for us white people to remember not everyone has reason to celebrate the things we celebrate and the erased work of many people of color must now be included in the national story. Simplistic views of history are useless. And almost nothing is an either-or.
For example, fact: Frederick Douglass is one of the greatest American leaders we've ever known. And fact: in that quote the author shared, Douglass is prioritizing Black male safety over Black female safety by prioritizing Black male suffrage over female suffrage. Or at the very least he is decided Black men should get the vote and protect themselves, andt Black women too--- instead of Black women doing their own self-protection through full citizenship and status as a political human being. That sounds pretty sexist to me.
Or, it sounds pretty 19th century.
And whether Black women were more in need of the protection the vote might afford because they were Black or because they were women is irrelevant-- because without extending the franchise to both Black people AND women, they'd have no vote.
Unless, of course, Frederick Douglass believed African American women could magically separate their femaleness from their Blackness.
5
Thank you, Mr. Staples for pointing out a conveniently forgotten truth about the feminist and suffrage movements -- especially now, when the importance of the vote, and particularly the Black vote has once again come under assault.
And for those unfamiliar with Ida B. Wells, may I suggest her book: Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900.
You will never be able to look at this country again in the same way.
1
Truth can stand on its own two feet. Revision is another thing, more horrible than a lie. Isolated quotes can mislead as well as lead. That men should have the right to vote and exclude women is at the center of this controversy.
7
Many different groups of people were mistreated at that time. Dredging up the bad behavior of the 1800's serves no good purpose now.
4
What a remarkable number of angry comments from white people, especially white women, to this very measured and enlightening piece. To point out that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were racist seems rather tame historical accuracy rather than the provocation "Mercury S", for example, furiously claims it to be. To deny the truth of the stain of racism on every level of our country's past and present and to call oneself a "progressive" while doing so makes me nauseated.
I'd further suggest that "Mercury S" is exactly the sort of privileged feminist who has done nothing to further the desperate conditions of so many women of color while fighting for their own right to sit in corporate boardrooms.
"Mercury S" and all those who recommended her comment should be ashamed of themselves. To complain that Frederick Douglass's "feelings were hurt" makes light of the lynching and denial of human and civil rights that continued in the African American communities into the 1960's.
If African American men weren't "calling for all women to receive their suffrage" perhaps it was because they themselves were being denied the right to vote all over the southern United States. Put away your anger and self-righteousness; read some history.
3
In Kentucky our well-known and in many ways justifiably admired suffragist, Laura Clay, was a terrible racist. She went so far as to oppose the 19th Amendment because it gave the Federal government ultimate say and opened the door to black women voting without the euphemistic educational qualification that the state would have imposed. That requirement had eliminated most black Kentucky women from the limited school board election franchise when it was reinstated for women in 1912. That school board franchise had been repealed in 1902 because too many black women had utilized it---e.g., voted. The history of racism in the suffrage movement is discomforting but one that needs to be explored.
2
There's a disturbing misogyny threaded through this piece. Mr. Staples says white women in the US suffrage movement betrayed black women, but it seems that men like Frederick Douglass betrayed ALL women by insisting on a "universal suffrage" for men only over a "universal suffrage" for all.
To illustrate the racism of white women in the women's suffrage movement, Staples could've quoted a black woman such as Sojourner Truth, who spoke powerfully of it. Instead, Staples chose to quote - & quite approvingly, too - a statement from a man, Douglass, that belittles or is willfully blind to the oppression and sufferings endured by women of all colors "because they are women". Such as rape, marital rape, forced marriage, forced pregnancies, death in childbirth, & being brutally beaten by men - all of which were rife in the US at the time. And since when have women NOT been "objects of insult and outrage at every turn" simply because we are women?
Also, an important point left out here is that the post-Civil War suffrage movements (sic) grew out of the abolitionist movement in which white women played a central role.
Was there racism among white women who fought for women's suffrage? Undoubtedly. But there was plenty of misogyny among black men in the anti-slavery, suffrage, civil rights, black power & liberation movements as well. And there's a trace of that same toxic misogyny in Mr. Staples' gleeful takedown of imperfect women not here to defend themselves.
15
As a member of the steering committee for the national coalition 2020 Women's Vote Centennial Initiative (2020centennial.org), I can tell you that we are fully acknowledging the less-than-100% honorable history of suffrage. Suffrage leaders were politicians and they looked to win, sometimes at the cost of African-American women. It is also true that there are heartening stories of inclusiveness as well. WVCI's vision for the 2020 centennial includes commemorating the continuing struggle of women of color for the vote for another 50 years beyond 1920.
As the author of the only biography of Alice Paul which examines the 1913 parade preparations closely, I am saddened to read that, once again, the myth of black women marching at the back of the 1913 parade is repeated here. As my book Alice Paul: Claiming Power(Oxford, 2014/2018) details, there were attempts to exclude African-Americans from the parade but they failed for a significant number. A subsequent article in the NAACP's The Crisis confirms that nearly 3 dozen black women marched. These included Terrell and a delegation from Howard University, who marched in the college section. Other black women marched with their states or with occupational sections. They were no doubt buoyed by the presence of African American men, who were driving most of the floats in the parade. The persistence of these women (as well as Wells-Barnett) is ignored in nearly all accounts of the parade.
J. D. Zahniser
15
Thank you for raising awareness of the mistakes of the past. This is how we learn from history and figure out how to avoid the errors made previously. Many women today in the 21st century want to be closer to their sisters of different backgrounds, and we are looking for ways to do so. We don't want to be like the women of the past who weakened their movements by dividing them. We realize that we all have similar concerns. Women of good will are learning to work together with each other to improve everyone's lot. Understanding each other's points of views and each other's history is invaluable. As it is true that not all women are the same, not all black women are the same, and not all white or brown women are the same, either. We are not a monolith, but we are connected in many ways, and we need to focus on strengthening our connections, so that we can work together to achieve more together. Learning each other's histories helps us to understand each other better and strengthens our connections. Keep up the good work!
3
As I read these comments I wonder if people forget that we are trying to form a more perfect union. Acknowledging the mistakes of the past does not diminish the great accomplishments. It just means that we must remember the mistakes in order not to repeat them. Our Union still requires a lot of work. Let’s start by acknowledging that the most vulnerable among us are but the canaries in the nine. The problems that affects them will eventually affect the broader population. Addressing these problems while they are small and manageable benefit all of us.
5
@Jean ChanoineI
I have no objection to addressing current problems, but I am growing intensely weary of the incessant effort to find racism under every single rock in the past as well as in the present. It is creating racial animus, not avoiding repetition.
4
One reason this opinion piece is useful is in calling attention to scholarship that examines and contextualizes this disturbing element of the suffragist movement. The final statement is challenging--if indeed racism is central to the project by which women gained the vote, then celebrating it is deeply problematic. Celebration tends to necessitate whitewashing, since it's positive by definition. Perhaps the problem with creating history through erecting monuments, or renaming streets or parks is that it's necessarily reductionist. (The flawed notion that history is produced by the actions of a few "great men" isn't improved all that much by adding a few "great women").
@abolland
"The final statement is challenging--if indeed racism is central to the project by which women gained the vote, then celebrating it is deeply problematic."
Celebrating the vote for women is deeply problematic?
Maybe for you but not for me.
We celebrate in this country when any group of citizens gains the vote--black or white, men or women. Can't we stop this constant carping and begin to celebrate that we all now have the the vote?
And just this once, let's avoid the voter ID issue, as it can be argued just as easily that allowing someone to vote without proof of registration or identity can effectively cancel out the vote of someone who votes elsewhere with proper ID.
5
Very good article. It is true that racism was pretty normal and prevelent right up to the civil rights era and even beyond it. We can look back in horror at the casual racism found in history and books as people of colour, and it is very difficult go deal with it, just as it is dealing with friends, family members or fellow activists who hold less than completely inclusive attitudes.
I luckily haven't lost many heroes due to racism because in every movement and field you can find exemplary individuals who did rise above the attitudes of their times. Many early suffergettes were also anti slavery activists and supporters so if we look beyond the few great but flawed leaders, we can still find alot of non racist good in the movement's history.
6
Mr. Staples retells a story we read last year in Teen Vogue, and in years before in other publications at about this time. But the accomplishments of those who have flaws are not tainted by the fact that they failed to cure all of society's ills. They deserve to be celebrated for the successes they were able to achieve, and not to have their day spoiled by those who can see only the ugliness of historic advances, advances that are always halting and not entirely satisfactory, but advances nonetheless.
11
Superb, enlightening piece.
I recently moved from the home town of W.E.B. Dubois to Susan B. Anthony's birthplace.
The issues they were both confronting were born of an unforgivably unjust, distorted, atrocity-soaked, anti-egalitarian society.
A thankless task, trying to fix the USA at such enormous cost, only for reactionaries to roll back progress.
The USA could have followed other examples of contemporaneous enlightenment-era basic human rights, if it were to have actually upheld its founding principles:
Slavery banned by 1783, Women's suffrage granted per Sweden where it was in effect in 1718.
The founders knew full well these basic rights could & should be built into their invention, but they chose instead to permanently poison the future of their United States with the most egregious violations of liberty & egalitarianism.
The USA therefore was & remains a lie. It sounds good on paper, but liberty & justice & democracy were never intended for all.
US patriotic mythologizers glorify 'freedoms' they stand for, but they whitewash the nation’s ongoing systemic crimes. They want an ethnic laboring caste denied the vote & women in their 'place'.
Activists had to work so hard for centuries for a parity that should've been granted from the outset.
Now as before, the struggle for basic rights for all in here faces a clawing back against progress.
The nation was deeply flawed by design, yet it’s the flaws that conservatives always seem to fight to retain, not the fix.
4
In regard to the 15th Amendment the article says: "Reasonable people could, of course, disagree on the merits of who should first be given the vote — women or black men." This is an incredibly revisionist statement, unless you're talking about reasonable people of the 21st century. The issue before the country in the midst of the civil war era was the status of newly minted black citizens, most of whom had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.
3
To keep the struggle for women's suffrage in the context of the time, all women were betrayed when women were not given the right to vote. Indeed, a women's right to vote long had been debated and even expected -- and many women were aggrieved that only their anti-slavery, and none of their pro-suffrage work, was rewarded.
Nor should it be forgotten that the woman's suffrage movement was political, moving forward on political actions and arguments directed at the white men who controlled the levers of power.
Both white and black woman wanted the right to vote. As Sojourner Truth said, "I am glad to see that men are getting their rights, but I want women to get theirs, and while the water is stirring I will step into the pool."
There was, in fact, more unity than described here.
19
I agree with so many of the comments here. All of the judging of the past, the judging of the men and women who built this country according to the "rules" of their time seems so useless and divisive to me. It doesn't make me self-flagellate and wallow in white guilt. It just makes me sad and makes we wonder about the future of this country. I believe that if this sort of judgement and debate continue to dominate liberal headlines, the republicans will continue to win. It's human nature. History repeats.
14
Keep it up, eat your own and stay divided. You're doing stellar work on behalf of the Trump campaign.
19
@Korgull
"The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them." -- Ida B. Wells
3
Just a note that the Black delegation that Mary Church Terrell walked with in the 1913 march were the young women of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. The women, my Founders, had just created the organization and this was their first act of service. Terrell was an honorary member.
I don't feel the article is trying to separate or bash. It's just saying don't forget this happened, and what happened is a very important part of history. You have to take the good with bad, and pointing the bad out doesn't take anything away unless you let it.
Yes, legally Black men had the right to before women but let's not forget Black Codes and Jim Crow practices that basically made many feel the right for Black men was null and void.
11
Women faced the same or similar kinds of obstacles to voting once they, on paper, won enfranchisement. That is a poorly explored truth. And women of all races and classes STILL don’t have a Constitutional Amendment that specifically guarantees their full, equal status in this “Land of the Free”
3
This is an important part of US history that informs the present. Staples does an excellent job of presenting history that is often ignored without diminishing the cause of everyone’s voting rights.
I’m taken aback by the many comments that use a “whataboutism” argument to redirect the acknowledgment of the role of racism in American history and how it continues today. These reactionary claims of hypocrisy reveal discomfort and denial with the ugly parts of racism in the US without disproving or invalidating the history as laid out in Mr. Staples superb article.
Racism is terrible, but being defensive about it does not make it less horrible or make it go away.
8
Exactly, if we can't question how will we grow?! As a society we can't keep the ugliness hidden and expect to thrive. We need to learn from it and try to move forward.
2
Suffragettes fought for abolition. Frederick Douglass refuted Mr. Staples' view when he said:
While pleading her case, Stanton repelled old allies by using terms like "Sambo" to refer to black men. Nevertheless, Frederick Douglass, the only African-American at the Seneca Valley Convention, remembered her as a crucial influence in moving him from a narrow abolitionism toward a broader humanism.
"...In a conversation with Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton when she was yet a young lady and an earnest abolitionist, she was at the pains of setting before me in a very strong light the wrong and injustice of this exclusion [from the legal right to vote]. I could not meet her arguments except with the shallow plea of "custom," "natural division of duties," "indelicacy of woman's taking part in politics," the common talk of "woman's sphere," and the like, all of which that able woman, who was then no less logical than now, brushed away by those arguments which she has so often and effectively used since, and which no man has yet successfully refuted." [From Frederick Douglass: 'A Women's Rights Man' by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Atlantic 2011]
8
The 19th Amendment did not give women the right to vote!
Let that sink in. It goes against everything we understand about women's suffrage. But look carefully at the language: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."
This language doesn't grant or bestow anything. It doesn't say women now have the right to vote. We need to stop thinking that way. It wasn't the case that men, in their wisdom, generously decided that women should be admitted to the club and graced with this new right.
The amendment doesn't even talk to women. It talks to men, who held all the power. And it says, "Hey, guys, stop messing around with the right of women to vote. They're citizens of the United States and therefore have an inherent right to vote. So stop denying it, stop abridging it."
No, the 19 Amendment doesn't give anything. It prohibits.
It wags a finger at anyone who interferes with a woman's inherent right, a right that existed, in theory if not in practice, long before the amendment was ratified.
A big hat tip to Stokely Carmichael, who made the same forceful observation about the 15th Amendment in "Black Power." These amendments didn't create rights; they protected rights that already existed.
9
Do we memorialize people because they are pure of heart or because they DID something which (even inadvertently) improved society. If only the former, we’re going to have a lot of empty statue bases lying around.
11
We can memorialize just give the full picture.
1
I have been studying the woman suffrage movement for 20 years. Undoubtedly there was racism in the movement, and also accommodation to racism, which is not the same thing. African American women participated effectively in the movement, but little of that story has been told--no doubt that is at least partly because the African American suffragists did not have the same opportunities as white suffragists to document their struggles. To a large extent African American suffrage groups worked separately from the mainline white suffrage organizations. But there was also cooperation and coordination at times. When white suffrage organizations worked with African American suffragists, they often did so sub rosa, so as not to draw the attention of the many racist suffrage supporters or potential supporters. The 19th Amendment enfranchised many African American women, but very few African American women in the South were beneficiaries of this great step towards a more democratic society.
5
@Nate Levin "The 19th Amendment enfranchised many African American women, but very few African American women in the South were beneficiaries of this great step towards a more democratic society." A very important point your raise. Thank you for you nuanced analysis.
"Historians are rightly warning groups involved in suffrage commemorations not to overstate the significance of the 19th Amendment. It covered the needs of middle-class white women quite nicely." Mr. Staples dilutes his own argument by introducing social class into the discussion. (And for his information, from what I've been able to learn the 19th covered the needs of my working class white ancestors quite nicely, too.)
4
The suffragist movement did not "ignore" black women. That was the time that black people were still considered to be less than human and women were property and chattel.
What matters today is for ALL women - of all races and colors - work together to take over one-half the power in OUR United States of America and the world to bring balance to them.
The male model is one of hate-anger-fear-Lies Lies Lies-WAR-death-destruction-rape-pillage-plunder. They want women to keep churning out war fodder for them so they try to control their bodies with laws.
NOW is the time to put a stop to it and for Socially Conscious Women and men to share power and create a more civil, relatively peaceful world.
12
@njglea
I was so pleased to read your first two paragraphs, but I am hardly convinced that a relatively peaceful world will magically result if we do not have a war machine able and willing to fight when necessary.
Weakness does invite aggression--any views to the contrary notwithstanding--as any decent study of history, going back as far as possible, will demonstrate. Views to the contrary are dangerous to all of us who value our way of life and our freedoms.
1
Oxford96, I will fight to my dying breath if OUR United States are ever attacked.
However, it is time we stop funding the BIG money masters in their demented quest to "control the world" with OUR hard-earned taxpayer treasure and OUR children/grandchildren's lives.
Let them dual or duke it out. Leave the rest of us out of it.
@njglea
Maybe the suffragist movment didn't "ignore" Black women, but they certainly didn't include them in the struggle -- and THAT is the point.
1
The arc of the moral universe bends toward Justice. However, it bends at an incredibly slow rate. To look back and see the flaws of the past is only useful if we incorporate that knowledge in the present. There are no do overs in life. Lincoln valued the Union over the slave and came to realize that the only way to save the Union was to abolish slavery. That decision has reverberated across the history of this country and the world for over 150 years. The Emancipation of the women of the world is in its infancy. Its history is littered with subterfuge, betrayal and pain.
We are a long way for seeing every human being for what they are-a human being. But we are far closer than we were 150, 100 or even 50 years ago. Let's recognize the past and work for the future. Let's work to make that arc bend faster for everyone.
4
@Maureen
I am not at all convinced that "We are a long way for seeing every human being for what they are-a human being. "
I think we are very close, in fact. Propaganda plays an oversized role in creating perception, which is often based on whatever the press chooses to highlight, as opposed to the overall picture.
Where’s the criticism of the white men who prevented all women from voting and who led the institution of slavery in the U.S.? It’s always white women who bear all of the criticism for a minority of the wrongs.
16
Mr. Staples, Man, you are a week late on the Episcopal Church Calendar. Last Friday was the 'Four Worthies:" Staton, Bloomer, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman. The irony of them being put together is all the sharper after reading this article.
4
In the UK, noted suffragettes later joined Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, as Slate pointed out - being an activist in any given political struggle, particularly one in which you have a vested personal interest, doesn't give you a superior understanding of oppression and its overthrow, as history shows us time and again...
Plus, as Audre Lord said, "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." Once a political/civil movement stops working out how best to universalize liberation from the particular social ill it set up to resist, and instead starts to work out how to get the best result it can from existing hegemonic structures, it becomes subordinate to those structures - and in the case of the US the racialized prejudices that still dominate them.
It takes a rare conscience (like that of MLK) to keep resisting the powerful blandishments of the political establishment and to delve further and further into the universal roots of oppression...
1
It's human nature for people to be more attuned to their own hardships and injustices they suffer than they will be to those suffered by others, and to plot and betray for expedience. It is important to present a well-rounded picture of past heroines, for a more complete picture of history. However, that should not impede us from celebrating the good that they accomplished.
3
When I was a young boy, I sat in Temple one Saturday afternoon. Near the end of the service, the Rabbi spoke to the congregation and asked that all service men and women from World War Two stand. The occasion, the Rabbi explained, was the anniversary of FDR's death. Many people stood, as did my father, who served bravely at the young age of 22 in the Navy, in both the Pacific and the Atlantic. To my astonishment, in the moment of silence, an aunt spoke out in a whisper certainly designed for everyone to clearly hear. "Robert! Shame on you!" I carefully watched my father, and he didn't even blink an eyelash.
Later that evening I ask him what the aunt meant by her loud whisper. "She cannot understand why Roosevelt didn't bomb the tracks to Auschwitz. They were only fifteen miles away. She's sure he was an anti-Semite."
History is full of broken lives and hearts, Mr. Staples. Human beings are vile. Women of all stripes and colors have been enslaved since the beginning of civilization, I dare say, on every continent and every country on this earth. I, too, wish they had all stuck together.
14
Interesting point, Len. Having read the historical record on this, I don't think Roosevelt was personally an anti- semite. But I do think the Allies betrayed the Jews. The tragedy of this whole thing is that the Allies, especially the British, knew early on, in 1942, about the slaughter going on at Auschwitz but did nothing to stop it. There is no doubt that widespread anti - semitism had everything to do with this.
Just as I see in these comments, people are loath to admit that their heroes have a dark side as well as a good side. We prefer to rationalize away the innate prejudices of our heroes that caused them to do harm, because we want so much to glorify their goodness . Thus we do not see that we ourselves have a contradictory light and dark side. Guess it is human nature, but it is not wise or helpful in the long run.
1
I always knew FDR was an anti-Semite! Tear down all his statues...
1
The author may be correct to point out that the leaders of the suffragette movement weren't ideologically perfect, but the tone of the article is sexist and mean-spirited. Such imperfections exist in every movement, some much more recent than the 19th century (one might point out Stokely Carmichael's disgusting comment that "the only position for women in SNCC is prone"). And when women couldn't own property, get child custody, get employment, control their own health and bodies, keep their husbands from beating and raping them, and a host of other fundamental human rights, it is insulting to say they wanted "parity" with men as though that were some kind of luxury. Historical correction and nuance are good. Attack, divide, deny positive accomplishments in others, and make the perfect the enemy of the good are what got Trump in office.
30
I agree. The author is incredibly sexist to point out the racism of those women.
1
Thanks for this enlightening article. I´ll check out the referenced work and agree with you this fracturing and misuse of black suffragists by Stanton has an ugly legacy. I´m more than a little sick of the "every person out for herself" attitude that seems to excuse those persons of using the other when convenient then dumping them. The pervasive selfishness engrained in US now is very destructive, and now this aggressive capitalist fueled society is suiciding on multiple levels. These attitudes and underlying values simply need to change.
Looking historically at Stanton it would really have not been so hard for her, a woman with vast resources, to embrace black women and the emancipation struggle. She chose not to and 150 yrs later we have all this rot to sift through.
2
And yet to this day women have to fight to be treated like equals among their male peers. In parts of the worl women can't drive, own property, or go outside the home without a male chaperone. Even in the workplace women have to fight to be treated as coworkers instead of as a potential sex partner hence the #Me Too movement. Women have traveled far in almost a hundred years. But have yet to shatter the final glass ceiling in a male dominated society.
9
Staples speaks from outside his own experience when he references Stanton's fear of retaliatory rape after the Civil War. Rape of women has been used as a weapon of war, and as a retaliatory act against the losers of any conflict since men have gone to war. It's impossible, even as a woman who has been raped, to fully understand the abject terror of being raped when it meant being impregnated as well, with no safe way to avoid bringing that pregnancy to term and bearing a child. A woman's life was over when she was raped.
It comes as no surprise that some white women feared rape by black men - newly freed black men who had every reason to want to take revenge against their former masters by raping "their" women. Rape has always been used as a strike against men. It's considered a humiliation to see your wife or daughter "defiled." This speaks to the profound objectification that women of all classes and races shared with Black men. Even in the 60s Eldridge Cleaver wrote about raping white women as an act of retaliation against white men.
I suggest that Staples has not imagined fully how very much white women of that era and newly emancipated black men had in common in their experience of living their lives owned by other men. It's way too easy to set two oppressed groups at odds. Even as a Black man living today, when police encounters may turn deadly, Staples will never know the fear of being raped and impregnanted that every woman of the nineteenth century did.
30
Well said and m, unfortunately, the terrorism of rape was not something only of the past, but lives on today. This dude should stop writing for and about but without Black women and against white women, and instead get out there and do whatever he can to get a constitutional amendment protecting ALL women passed, and pronto!
2
We were taught this history at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work, community organizing track, albeit not quite this spin. Divide and conquer has a long history. Study history!
1
I read Lori Ginzburg's biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and I suggest Brent Staples re-read it. She was born into a slave-holding family when slavery was legal in the north. She was a product of her times, as were all leaders. Frederick Douglass's statement about white women not being dragged from their homes and hunted in the street like black slaves, while true, ignores the reality that many white women were probably beaten and subjugated in their in their homes without legal recourse. Human beings of any skin tone, persecuted as individuals, are still victims of persecution and women have been persecuted and belittled by male dominated systems of power peopled by males of many diverse skin tones. Look at the world around us today. As for the 19th Amendment, history suggests that women were granted the vote by men who needed women to vote for prohibition. And, decades earlier, many suffragists, included those in New York State living along the Underground Railroad, did put their own civil rights on the back burner to fight against slavery. No one then was perfect. No one now is perfect. We all have our perspectives. None of us reading the NY Times today walked city streets or country roads when the suffragettes, now know as suffragists, were alive. Fact: people were not on the same page back then just as they are not on the same page now.
14
One way to connect the suffragists of the 20's to the Civil rights movement of the 60's is through the figure of Alice Paul and the E.R.A. movement that spanned from the 20's to the 70's.
Every year, starting in 1923, an equal-rights bill was brought before Congress. Finally the amendment passed both houses by the required two-thirds majorities and went to the states for ratification in 1972. It did so on the back of the structural peculiarity of Title VII in the 1964 Civil rights act which was born from a "sex" amendment supported by southern conservatives and anti-labor industrialists. Title VII of the act created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (E.E.O.C.), but gave it no enforcement powers. The commission was supposed to induce compliance by persuasion and mediation. It came into existence on July 2, 1965, after employers had had a year to adapt to the new law.
Title VII baby teeth have since been replaced with incisors and molars with real bite. All the gains of upper middle class women made since the 70s have come from this provision of the Civil Rights Act. It is the keystone of white female empowerment under the law.
3
Thank you for this history lesson. I am now far more informed than before.
6
@Jaque:
This isn't a history lesson -- it's an opinion piece.
2
Oh God! Our icons are less than perfect? Shocking!
Nelson Mandela was a communist and advocated violence?
George Washington owned slaves?
Hillary defended Bill? (or was that a good thing?)
MLK slept around?
People are not perfect. Looking back at what heroes did years ago, we find they had feet of clay. People of all races have struggled mightily and sacrificed their very lives to lift up the Black race in this country. The constant drumbeat of why don't you do more? Why didn't you do more, has worn rather thin.
22
Who asked you to do more? Acknowledging the mistakes of the past does diminish the accomplishment. It just help us to not repeat them.
Starting from the 19th century going back to the origins of history, compile a list each and every person of every race, gender, and class who did *not* in turn objectify everyone else in sight by the same categories. That list will be quite short.
Holding dead white suffragists of the 19th century accountable for their prejudices would be as unfair as holding to account the 80% of black citizens who celebrated the acquittal of OJ Simpson in 1995 for his slaughter of two innocent white people.
Times change, do they not? And it is best not to hold grudges against the dead if there is no moral benefit in it for the living.
15
This painful examination is at last beginning to dig around the edges of the 19th century's famous radical reform movements, which were all rooted in each other until Progressivism that overlapped the 19th and 20th centuries began to reveal the deep Protestant alarm about the direction of American history. That alarm, of course, expressed itself early in the 19th century when New England realized that the southern states were structuring a "wrong" form of racial supremacy, one that promoted feudal whites, but also barred blacks from acquiring the education and other tools of self-reliance that would permit American society to determine their true value to the future--and too bad if they did, in fact, prove to be "inferior." This deep anxiety was well hidden in much fanaticism against slavery.
So was a deep anxiety about immigrant hordes hidden in 19th century feminism and temperance "reform," both piggy-backed on abolitionism.
A good deal of the racist and anti-immigrant fear in all of this emerged during the "Progressive Era" when white Protestant men were at last only too willing to permit their women to make their votes offset the power of the smelly, drunken hordes, and yes, too, the ignorant black peasantry of the rural south. Nobody has ever remotely plumbed the depth of all of this, and I doubt that anybody ever will, completely.
4
Racism is still at the core of American politics, thanks to the Republican Party exploiting it to sfay in power and distract from their enrich the rich agenda. I fear although the price this nation has paid for its history of racism and slavery, written even into the Constitution, has been enormous, the greatest costs for our racistm and hate may be yet to come if we don't reject the self aggrandizing demagogues who purvey this poison.
4
This essay profoundly misinterprets Stanton. She was both an abolitionist and a suffragette. She was a personal friend of Frederick Douglass, and she strongly supported giving ALL adults the right to vote. She was deeply disappointed and greatly angered by women of both races being excluded from the right to vote, and that right being restricted to men. This was especially the case after women abolitionists struggled to obtain freedom and voting rights for black men.
Mr. Staples unfortunately neglected to provide Stanton's full statement on this issue: “This is the negro’s hour. Are we sure that he, once entrenched in all his inalienable rights, may not be an added power to hold us at bay? Have not ‘black male citizens’ been heard to say they doubted the wisdom of extending the right of suffrage to women? Why should the African prove more just and generous than his Saxon compeers? If the two millions of Southern black women are not to be secured the rights of person, property, wages, and children, their emancipation is but another form of slavery. In fact, it is better to be the slave of an educated white man, than of a degraded ignorant black one.”--December 16, 1865
So, contrary to Mr. Staples, Stanton advocated for ALL women, white and black, gaining the right to vote. She expressed her anger in an unfortunately ugly way, but her anger at women's exclusion from suffrage was justified.
36
A correction: Susan B. Anthony did not attend the 1848 Seneca Falls convention. She met Elizabeth Cary Stanton later.
5
No woman of any "color" was granted the right to vote until 1920.
11
Perhaps the moral to this story is - when given the choice between elevating a white woman or a man, the white man will choose to elevate the man, regardless of his color.
23
People want historical heroes who are 100% good. That's never how it is. It's hard to embrace someone's accomplishments without wholly embracing the person, but that's what we have to do.
12
@Red Ree
This is precisely why I find many of the leaders in the statue removal movement to be threatening to the nation: many want to carry that removal through to our Founding Fathers. That is a step way too far in my view.
it's not that hard to embrace their accomplishments without embracing their persons. Why is that so hard? The statue remains to recognize and honor their accomplishments; if people want to add information nearby explaining the shortcomings of their persons, that would not be difficult.
Their accomplishments are unprecedented in the history of mankind, and have have resulted in the freedoms fought for and won being discussed here.
What I fear is going on in the movement to take down the Founding Fathers is actually a movement to take down the country, its Constitution and its Bill of Rights--mainly because their value is neither widely taught or understood.
Freedom and liberty have "been done" as far as the academy is concerned, and it long ago abandoned studies of dead white males--the very people who gave us the ability to arrive at today, and tomorrow, in ever-increasing freedoms in a racism free society.
The movement to ferret out racism everywhere has become obsessive; a new PhD topic is hard to find when so many are going to college and so much has already been written about.
We need scholars who understand that today's gains are only possible due to yesterday's Revolutionaries and Founders.
5
Oxford96, Are you aware that the statues being removed were erected in the 20th century under the auspices of Jim Crow? One need not "ferret out" racism unless you are blind to it.
When I was in graduate school in the early '70's, I asked that same question...why were not more black women involved in the suffrage movement. I did a lot of first source research at Schlesinger Library in Cambridge and my take away was that it was largely the black women's organizations (civic, workplace) themselves that decided that they wanted to focus on the fuller civil rights movement and not not at this time focus on the divisions between men and women that determined their lack of involvement in the largely white women's suffrage movement. Unfortunately, I had a house fire and the paper (100 pages with almost as many pages of footnotes) was destroyed...you will have to take my word...and folks do need to continue the research...but it was, not largely about the racism of the suffragists. It was rather a determination about where to put energy and how best to propel the civil right movement forward.
13
This article and the commentary illustrates both the American and human quandary. We are such a flawed creature. It is easy to feel bitterness about these flaws. It's somewhat harder to rejoice in our aspirations and achievements in the face of these flaws. It's mostly an act of faith to believe that goodness, over the very long haul, has the advantage in this endless human struggle. Without benefit of any religious belief, I have been blessed with that faith.
7
@Michael
Racial wage disparity in the South is less than in the North.
Public schools in the South are less segregated than in NYC and Nassau County, NY than anywhere in the South.
Democrats, however, do a much better job of virtue messaging than Republicans do. That is derivative to the fact that Democrats engage in more racist behavior and project their own values on their political opponents. Republicans, who have not personally engaged in racist behavior, perceive the problem of racisms to be in the past, unaware of the extensive racism practiced by those white people who contend it is a problem because they, themselves, are dyed in the wool racists.
That was then, this is now. Black men today aren't helping out black women much by not marrying them and often abandoning them with their offspring.
11
A lot of this “abandonment” has to do with the new Jim Crow - locking up black men, who are treated harshly and unequally by the police and by the educational and judicial systems.
1
@Sam you assume black women wish to marry. That's presumptuous and sexist.
This is so overdo. Read anything about Ida B. Wells and you'd already know this. Kudos!
13
This is no new news. Sojourner Truth best explained the division between whites and black feminists in her "Ain't I a Woman Speech". I don't think the first wave feminist conversation talked about other people of color. Let alone addressed Native Americans.
Don't judge historical figures thru modern lens and discredit their radical thinking (tho limited in our eyes now). Each movement builds on each other.
25
Women who, years earlier, surrendered children for adoption have found little support among feminist communities for their children to gain access to the original birth certificate. Misplaced and patronizing concern for birth mother anonymity have led feminist-heavy communities, such as ACLU and Planned Parenthood, to testify against adoptee access. Misunderstanding occurs when feminist communities simply have not listened and are unable to hear mothers when they say they have never forgotten, or stopped loving, their children. Untold thousands of women have died, never having seen or held their children, because some misguided feminists held fast at the gate of compassion.
2
@martha Hulbert I am familiar with "surrendering" a child and children born in private religious facilities were not always "surrendered" to adoption. There were private adoptions where NO records were kept. The reality for many "surrendering" mothers is that they were shamed and bullied and sometimes declared mentally feeble and incapable of raising a child simply because they had gotten pregnant to begin with. So, you are not entirely correct. It was 1970's era feminists who fought for single women's rights to keep and rear their own children. And, there may be women alive who were so broken and shamed by their experiences that they might want to remain anonymous. I understand the ACLU's stand. I oppose the ACLU's stand. I suggest you find a tape of Mike Pence's VP debate remarks about adoption if you want to see where the problem lies. All surrendering mothers' problems begin with religious patriarchal influence and money. And its sadly true that many feminist working women past their childbearing years seek to adopt poor women's newborns.
2
@martha Hulbert
Liberal women view reproduction as a property right and view children as property. When a woman gives up a child to adoption, she is waiving her property rights, and a contract is a contract.
Thank you for exposing a truth which has been ignored for too long. My grandmother was one of those black women who was a devoted suffragist in the South during the early 20th century. She risked her life and marriage to participate in the marches and protests only to be betrayed by the white women of the local Florida women's group she had worked with.
They did not believe that she was a college educated African-American woman when so many former slaves and slave descendants could not read or write. She had graduated from one of the first classes at Benedict College in 1897 but since it was a "Negro" Normal College it was dismissed as unacceptable.
This is one of the ma y reasons that I have never fully accepted the current women's movement. They want us as warm bodies to fill out the crowd at a protest, but our ideas and issues don't really matter to them. I have been holding my breath for the last 40 years wondering when white women will throw us under the bus if that will guarantee their success.
19
@MsBrookie
She would have been even less welcome had she migrated to the North during the depression. The minimum wage laws and unionization would have prevented employment for her as well as her husband in Yankee land. The North wanted the slaves freed, but didn't want them to move next door.
1
@MsBrookie
What a proud legacy you carry. What an amazing grandmother you had. I am deeply sorry to read of her negative experiences--they only go to highlight that just because they are white does not mean women are intelligent or unbiased--often the contrary, as you relate.But I am glad to read of her accomplishments--especially at a time when higher education was uncommon for all women of all races. (I should add that just because they are white does not mean that women are unintelligent or biased, either.)
Which ideas and issues would you like to have heard that aren't being heard? Can you share them in a reply?
Stop living in the past and letting a bygone era continue to offend you. There are real structural issues black people face today that need solving and grinding up dead people and trying to stain their accomplishments only makes you look bitter and serves to alienate
20
A slanted and self-serving article. It was male suffragists, black and white, including Douglass, who betrayed black women. Mt. Staples is distracting from this fundamental betrayal.
Frederick Douglass excused giving the vote only to black men ("our" ballot!) because black women 's oppression and suffering occurred because they were black, not women. The logic escapes me.
And he is wrong of course. Black women were and are oppressed due to their sex as well as their race.
In fact versions of the horrors he describes here as happening to black women happened to white women also and many still do. The bodies of women of all colors litter the landscape. Women had no rights to their children, an education, their earnings, their money, their bodies. They could be abused with impunity.
Many well known white women suffragists worked tirelessly for abolition as well as suffrage. They were deeply betrayed by the men they thought were their allies. The issue split the women's movement.
Members of civil rights movements are often afflicted by prejudice, woman hating as well as racism. Nonetheless their gains are real. The women's movement is a centuries long effort to overturn multiple injustices, not just secure the vote. Women of all colors benefit from its successes, whether they trust each other or not.
49
Awful. Voting rights should be rescinded because the women activists back then were racists, at least the ones in the history books. Just like those white supremacist statues that have been removed, voting rights for women should be obliterated.
10
White women have been the greatest beneficiaries of the African American blood, sweat, tears and labor shed by black African American men, women and children during the Reconstruction, Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras.
Nearly 5000 blsck men, women and children were lynched between 1877-1950. See The Equal Justice Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.
Moreover Plessy v, Ferguson made separate and unequal the law. And the white supremacist bigoted son of the Confederate States of America Thomas Woodrow Wilson made that the doctrine the official policy and practice of the federal government.
White supremacy does not require the malignant prejudiced racism espoused by these white lady suffragettes. But the practical impact and result is the same.
In 2016 54% of white women voted for Trump. While 98% of black women voted for Hillary. And Shelby County v. Holder has eviscerated the pre-clearance provisons of the Voting Rights Act paid for by the blood of a white woman named Viola Liuzzo.
19
@Blackmamba
Are you under the impression that Trump seeks to suppress the black vote, while under his administration black unemployment has fallen to the lowest point since 1973?
This is no accident. Nearly all his policies are designed to put all Americans to work: lower corporate tax rate to make our corporations competitive on the world stage (before it was the world's highest--no wonder jobs were scarce); lowering tariffs on our goods will increase jobs at home; removing excess regulations stimulates businesses, which then hire more workers; limiting the labor supply by restricting illegal immigration drives up wages as businesses compete for labor in a tight market.
More and more women, blacks and hispanics, all of whom are already beneficiaries of his policies, and grateful for the opportunity to climb back onto the employment ladder, will be voting for him.
@Blackmamba
It is a mystery why 98% of black women voted for Hillary, who never accomplished anything for black women or men or white women for that matter.
1
Sigh. When will we stop repeating the falsehood that "53% of white women voted for Trump?" In 2016 about half of the people eligible to vote turned out. About half of them voted for Trump. Based on notoriously inaccurate exit polls, about half of the white women who voted cast a ballot for Trump. So maybe a quarter of white women voters supported Trump. Less inflammatory than saying 53% but much more truthful.
2
Nothing's really changed unfortunately.... https://www.vox.com/2018/7/25/17607232/trump-white-women and this....https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/why-white-women-...
7
@Kim
It always has to be about Trump, right Kim? So let's unpack what is going on:
Under his administration, the unemployment rate is lower than it has been since 1973 and for women since 1953. Yet "nothing's really changed, unfortunately"?
Here's something else these women against Trump don't even know:
Under Clinton's administration, his government in 1997 settled in court with liberal groups litigating on behalf of immigrant kids. After 9 years, the two sides agreed that "alien migrant minors" must be separated --Separated--from adult detention facilities within 72 hours if no alternative safer arrangements could be found. Later it became 5 days.
Under Obama the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals --famous for being a liberal court--determined that Obama's administration has institutionalized deterrence as part of his detention policies, and the court demanded change. He also detained families together in defiance of the 5-day Separation law reached in 1997 (see Flores Settlement) because the influx from Middle America overwhelmed facilities available at the time.
The court gave him 20 days in which to Separate the minors from the adult detention facilities in which their parents were held. He complied because it was the law--litigated by liberal groups on behalf of children--groups against ICE and for destruction of "deportation machinery." They forced Separation for the benefit of children.
https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2016/07/06/15-56434.pdf
Mr. Staples: Betrayal is a very strong and probably erroneous word to use when depicting the progressive views of the suffragettes.
The advancement of people of color to the same place as that of a white male, is historical composed of small and nearly indescribable efforts, not marches nor parades.
So, to impugn the collective consciousness of American "suffragette-ism" (there was a British movement too) as completely racist, must be ignorant of all the facts, that you probably don't have access to.
I am sure there were woman who stated, "What about the Negro Woman?' when referring to their collective voices to acquire the vote.
Here's a fact you might not know. In California which was established, inhabited by Mexicans, and developed by the Spanish and Mexicans, women had the right to equal amounts of any property to which they came to possess by marriage. Women in California, colored or not, could own land. See origins of "community property."
Land rights have a huge impact on voting rights. California became a state in 1850.
America's laws of at the time of the amendment to the US Constitution allowing voting rights for women had an impact.
4
What a bizarre rewrite of history to reflect modern values and judgements on a period when the people in question were exemplary in relation to almost any of their contemporaries. So sad that in failing to live up to 2018 liberal NYC standards somehow the suffragettes are now rendered racist liberals.
28
Thank you for this full account. This information was definitely left out of what I was taught about suffrage in women’s studies courses. Privilege is pernicious and those of us who have it in society need to be constantly vigilant to its uses and abuses.
6
I don't deny your argument, however I think it's a significant oversight that you neglected to note that when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott first conceived of the idea of a women's rights conference, they were attending a conference in England calling for the abolition of slavery. There were many abolitionists in the suffrage movement. Waiting an additional 50 years after the 15th amendment was passed was no small thing. In many states - e.g. New York - women had no property rights and were subjected to significantly higher inheritance taxes among other abuses. There's no law that says we can only right one wrong at a time. We should have established universal suffrage with the 15th amendment.
36
As I read this piece, I was struck by how familiar this all sounds, With the Equal Rights Amendment still waiting to be ratified, I can't help but wonder if it would be part of the constitution already if all voters, inclusive no matter what their skin color might be, had full access to their.right to vote. History has a way of repeating itself.
3
A good essay. We should remember people, warts and all. The ancient Greeks would say, "He was brave, that day." In their ethics this was the highest praise. But it also meant that on other occasions he probably was a reprehensible person in any of a variety of ways: a coward, a traitor, a rapist, corrupt, etc.
7
Oh those bad liberals! Let’s not bother to try to understand one another. Let’s fight!
12
Excellent article.
3
"Black feminists in particular are eager to see if these remembrances own up to the real history of the fight for the vote—and whether black suffragists appear in them."
Translation: Black people have no formal institutions (and the "church" doesn't begin to cover what I'm talking about) to foster, further the discovery of, advocate for, and maintain the truth about American history as it pertains to the black experience. Put differently, white people have to admit the truth before the truth can exist. Well, as some other cultures know: only if you choose life over what you believe in.
I don't think the first issue is further knowledge but the snuffed out desire to learn anything other than what will get you a job or a party invitation (that goes for every color). I'm far less concerned about white women, "owning up," than I am about black people meaningfully knowing history, and their own within it, in the first place. White women are their white husbands counterparts, imprimaturs, breasts, and spines; otherwise, the nation would have progressed by now. You wait for the rise of morality in white women at your peril. And no number of contrary examples can disprove the sum of the mess we're in or the balance of white women's racist support.
7
wondering if i missed the part where women were sick and tired of being beaten by drunken husbands whom they dared not divorce since they could not own property, enter into contracts, and had no rights to their children etc.
34
Am I missing the part where black women were not given the vote with white women?
1
believing that your interests align with those who have more power rather than with those who have less power never ends well
3
How delightfully toxically feminist of the NY Times to mention that the suffragists betrayed black WOMEN.
“I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman,” Susan B. Anthony famously said.
They betrayed black MEN.
Not to mention that they would have had the vote sooner, had they not insisted that they not be conscripted.
They betrayed white men, too.
4
Susan B. Anthony and the other women suffragists -- White and Black -- wanted voting rights for BOTH women and Black men, and not ONLY for Black men. Why wouldn't they? As others have commented, the suffragists had no reason to believe that Black men, once they were granted the vote, would use their power to support women.
BTW, here's what Sojourner Truth had to say on this issue (in 1867): “I feel that I have the right to have just as much as a man. There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and colored women not theirs, the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before.”
In the end, Black men gained the right to vote in 1870, while women were left to wait another 50 years to do so.
1
The comments section is disappointing yet again. Just like all the people who defended Bill Clinton during his poorly executed book tour a month ago, I see too many resorting to tribal affiliations and knee-jerk reactions.
This author lists facts, not opinions. They only seem "strange" if your self-identity is threatened, or if your personal heroes are taken down a notch. You can get over them and move forward. Mr. Staples makes many good points. I think we should listen to him.
13
@Gustav
"tribal affiliations and knee-jerk reactions..."
In other words, a typical day in the comments section of a "paper of record."
@Gustav If you read the comments, you will see that he got many facts wrong. This was a very sexist article. For example, from another commenter: This essay claims that "Stanton, instead, embarked on a Klan-like tirade against the amendment. She warned that white woman would be degraded if Negro men preceded them into the franchise."
Unfortunately, Mr. Staples failed to provide Stanton's actual statement: “This is the negro’s hour. Are we sure that he, once entrenched in all his inalienable rights, may not be an added power to hold us at bay? Have not ‘black male citizens’ been heard to say they doubted the wisdom of extending the right of suffrage to women? Why should the African prove more just and generous than his Saxon compeers? If the two millions of Southern black women are not to be secured the rights of person, property, wages, and children, their emancipation is but another form of slavery.In fact, it is better to be the slave of an educated white man, than of a degraded ignorant black one.” December 26, 1865
1
In the end people vote with their pocketbook and it is in the interest of white females to maintain white privilege for their kids. This is why suburban Moms are more likely to be conservative and vote republican. They want to keep all the advantages in their hood. It's why despite being the biggest recipients of affirmative action they are also some of its biggest critics. I have actually heard some white women claim they have suffered more than black or indigenous people.
Not that democrats get a pass. One of the reasons the democratic party is decimated today is because of the resentment over a black man, President Obama, being elected before a white woman, Hillary Clinton. It didn't matter who was better qualified. There was just this idea that somehow white woman were suppose to automatically be next in line.
As a result President Obama never got the type of support from his own democratic party that he should have. If anything it seems resentment set in when he won reelection and then the DNC became obsessed with making Hillary president. The irony is that with all that tunnel vision and support she still lost. I also think it's time black women rethink their allegiance. The group that voted in the highest percentage for Hillary Clinton were black women and yet black communities have gotten the least in return for their votes. Hillary Clinton has actually done more to get jobs for people in India than black women. So much for that sisterhood.
8
This is getting ridiculous...
13
This essay claims that "Stanton, instead, embarked on a Klan-like tirade against the amendment. She warned that white woman would be degraded if Negro men preceded them into the franchise."
Unfortunately, Mr. Staples failed to provide Stanton's actual statement: “This is the negro’s hour. Are we sure that he, once entrenched in all his inalienable rights, may not be an added power to hold us at bay? Have not ‘black male citizens’ been heard to say they doubted the wisdom of extending the right of suffrage to women? Why should the African prove more just and generous than his Saxon compeers? If the two millions of Southern black women are not to be secured the rights of person, property, wages, and children, their emancipation is but another form of slavery.In fact, it is better to be the slave of an educated white man, than of a degraded ignorant black one.” December 26, 1865
So Stanton actually protested against the failure to give WOMEN, both white and black women, the right to vote, when it was given only to black men. So, contrary to Mr. Staples, Stanton was arguing against what the title of this article says, "How the suffrage movement betrayed black women."
42
Harriet Beecher Stowe would be considered a racist today.
The white woman who when met by Lincoln he commented about the fact that she was the sole one responsible for starting the war. White women helped many slaves escape and clandestinely ran the Underground Railroad.
16
Good intersectional article, but it’s important to remember that this is a man making money from dividing up the feminist movement. Yes, it is important to remember the ways white suffragettes betrayed black women, but this is also just another man spewing a inconsistent, fragmented representation of women. I recommend the Charles M. Blow article where he checks his maleness, and Laura Mulvey.
17
White men were not heroes, because they betrayed white women.
White women were not heroes, because they betrayed black women.
Black women were not heroes, because they betrayed gay black women.
Is it really a useful exercise to judge people living a hundred or more years ago using our norms? Or is it just to make us feel morally superior to those who after all cannot defend themselves?
38
abo, Paris: white Suffragettes and today’s white feminists were not marching in the Deep South during the 1960s, such as the bloody Selma Bridge march, nor in the fight for black teachers in Ocean Hill-Brownsville against New York City’s white teachers union, neither were they recruited from elite women’s finishing schools, Spence, Buckingham, Mrs. Porter’s, etc., cotillions, etc. Seven Sister Ivy Leagues, the state social registers....
1
Vote for this sculpture by Jane DeDecker, which commemorates the hard work of a large group of women, including African-American leaders, to be placed in Central Park. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPnFVGmKDcU&feature=youtu.be
2
I think political movements often sacrifice the most vulnerable and marginalized in an effort to achieve some measure of change. Sometimes the change is very significant. Which doesn't minimize the damage done. And the people inside these movements--often reflecting the bigotry of the larger society-- are often shocked when the effort is not appreciated by the people they have sacrificed to the "greater good."
6
Let's take one more step.
Instead of two houses of Congress being the Senate and the House of Representatives, let's have it be a Men's House and a Women's House. Women vote for one, and men for the other. Every law must be carried by a majority of both.
We'd see right away more respect for the concerns of each. That would ensure women real, full, equal political power.
I don't propose that for other groups, because they are minorities that separated out would be swamped unless over-represented.
Men and women are so near 50:50 as makes no political difference for fairness, but their opinions on some matters are starkly different, and ought both to be considered.
7
@Mark Thomason
Way to go, let's build more barriers that keep people separated, rather than finding solutions that require people to find ways to work together!
Should it also be mentioned that the temperance movement played a profound role in women’s suffrage? It was widely believed that if women could vote, the liquor lobby would be forever defeated, and Prohibition would stand for generations. It was largely the drive for prohibition that motivated many men to support women’s suffrage. I make this point merely to illustrate the dizzyingly complex nexus of issues that came together in that period, when several amendments were added in such a brief span of time. Mr. Stephens is correct to highlight the racism that was the undercurrent for so much of the politics of those days, and it would do well for those who embrace the “progressive” label today to acknowledge the bigotry that formed the basis of so much of the “progress” of that older era. It would be nice, however, if Mr. Stephens would be good enough to acknowledge that the racism of those early feminists was hardly unique to them, and his implicit attempt to put contemporary liberalism in that context fails as long as the modern right wing so freely embraces the ugly xenophobia and racism that is the cornerstone of nationalist identity politics and always has been.
27
@Joshua Krause Fascinating how many issues & interests interesects. It's also true that proponents of the income tax were opposed by the liquor lobby, because if the income tax was passed into law, then the gov't wouldn't be as dependent as it had been on liquor taxes (a huge portion of the federal revenue until then) and might then feel emboldened to enact prohibition. Which is what happened.
3
@Joshua Krause
Interesting that the first accomplishment of women's suffrage was Prohibition, the only constitutional amendment to be reversed.
1
A Constitutional Amendment must be carried by a very wide margin, two thirds of Congress and then three quarter of state legislatures, including some very racist Congressional delegations and state legislatures.
The black males vote was carried in the rush of victory from the Civil War. Many of the worst racists were not even there. Many more who were equivocal themselves dared not defy the victory in the Civil War, dared not defy the Battle Hymn of the Republic that those men died to make men free.
By contrast, suffrage was carried in the post WW1 years of a rush to "normalcy" under Warren Harding and his corrupt Republicans. The most racist delegations and states were in full power. That is a much different challenge.
I have to wonder if the women could have done it at all, in that time among those *men* if they had tried to carry the fight against racism behind the same banner for the same victory.
Perhaps those women leaders were racist. Perhaps they were hard eyed realists. Perhaps both.
They did win. They might not have. Black women won with them, however they talked about it at the time. All women got the vote, black and white.
We should also remember that the slaves had been denied education, in an organized effort to keep them Sambo-like. It was deliberate. It was partly successful. In 1866, those men showed their recent past, which is not to be blamed on them, but still true, and it took a long time and a lot of effort to overcome that.
13
I am a former teacher of African American History, and can thus tell you that Mr. Staples only has the story partially right. It is more nuanced than he states. Douglass and what would become the suffragists were allies during the Abolitionist movement. This is why Douglass ended up as the speaker at Seneca. But Douglass and Stanton parted ways over the politics of the 15th Amendment. Just as Stanton and the others sold out black women as a practical way of gaining voting rights for women, Stanton and her followers believed that Douglass had sold out women (and he did) for practical passage of the 15th to give voting rights to black men. Notice Douglass did not force the issue of the 15th Amendment including black women or Native Americans.
Douglass and Stanton are equally guilty of the unrealistic view that one can compromise ethics and morality for political gain. However, they had seen it done before---indeed it was the pattern of America from as early as the Declaration of Independence (Jefferson's anti-slavery clause removed to appease the South), the Constitution's compromises (3/5 Clause, Fugitive Slave Law, and 1806 ban on imported slaves). On the moral issue of race, the country simply tried to compromise too long and we got a Civil War. On the moral issue of women's rights we compromised too long and got the Triangle Factory Fire. Lesson to America as it relates to now: moral compromises breed destruction. Remember that as we look at our 45th president.
90
@Sierra
Perhaps the real lesson here is that getting to a perfect society in one big step is just never going to happen. Remember, that while each of these great strides forward did leave out one group or another, ultimately, they have help build a pathway way that has brought up to a MORE Equal society, just not yet a perfect one. Sorry that the changes haven't happened as fast as some people would like to them to happen.
5
@Sierra
There were no non slave states when the Constitution was written. There were few black slaves in the North in 1776 because they couldn't tolerate the cold weather that indentured servants from Europe could in the quarters allocated to them.
The 3/5th compromise was a creation of the North to diminish the political power of the South. The Northern elite had no problem counting their white indentured servants who did not vote, at 1:1, but were happy to discount those in the South.
New England fortunes were created buying slaves in Africa from African warlords and delivering them to Boston.
When slavery was abolished in Washington DC, in 1862, the owners of slaves were paid in exchange for the appropriation of their property by the government, as was the case in every western nation that abolished slavery.
The South did not secede over slavery. The North did not fight the war to abolish slavery.
The South had more House seats, reflecting their higher population. The lower population North had a majority in the Senate. The mercantile North, however, had more money than the agrarian South and treated them like a poor cousin, charging them high freight costs to ship their goods north and charging them high prices, bolstered by tariffs for imported goods, for manufactured goods from the North.
The other part of the 3/5 compromise was that the South was assessed lower taxes. The North wanted to raise Southern taxes.
1
Just as the founding fathers compromised their original vision of liberty by accommodating slaveholders.
1
I see no mention of the crucial role of Quakers, many of whom like Susan B. Anthony were abolitionists. There was an overlap between the two movements. This does not mean that anywhere near all white women involved in the movement were supportive of black voting rights, but to ignore the efforts of women like Susan B. Anthony is just wrong.
23
@MayCoble
Anthony was a mixed bag, Staples is absolutely right to write this corrective to the usual narrative. The story is more complex than any short piece can capture.
2
@MayCoble
Right on. These people are my heroes and the trend of other groups to disparage then is distasteful.
Movements make incremental gains and if it were not for this groups women would still not have the vote yet.
This disparagement of these heroes and others is not ok and I am really getting sick of this kind of "1984 iike". historical revisionist tactics.
They were heroes and they deserve their place in our wonderful history of progress
@MayCoble
Now you know how a lot of use 'white-guys' feel.
1
The general public, as Mr. Staples illustrates, does not realize the racism of the suffrage movement, probably because sexism and racism are often conflated in Trump's America. The reality is that it is well known by historians that Stanton and many suffragists were racists. For a while she even fell in with the proslavery crowd in 1850s Kansas when she thought that her suffrage movement was being damaged by a perception that that the suffragists were also abolitionists. Furthermore, the suffragists were not always supported by blue collar women who needed to get jobs and not upset employers. To make things even more confusing, the rich white women who ran the movement often didn't side with blue collar workers when they did get the nerve to strike, as in the New York strikes of 1911, due to the tinge of socialism in the ranks.
11
@Anthony
spare me "the movement was not perfect'. WHAT MOVEMENT IS...THE ARE ALL CHAOTIC AND FOCUSED.
The great German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once remarked, "Two things people should not see being made, sausage and laws."
By the way, if my memory serves me correctly, in the late 1970's or early 1980's a commemoration march for Martin Luther King's famous March on Washington was getting organized. Well, guess what? Gays were excluded from the planning committee and were told to march unobtrusively and well behaved in the back for the parade.
History repeats itself.
25
@jon jones
That was wrong, especially since a gay man, Bayard Rustin, was seminal to the original March on Washington.
However, a parade is not a movement, law or amendment.
1
Yes. And Democrats continue to beg for votes from the pulpits of some of the most homophobic black churches in the country.
The Truth will set you free. There is nothing wrong in pointing out myths about the suffrage movement and its leaders. Celebrate the fact that we are all now allowed to vote and then continue to fight barriers to this right that keep popping up in Republican controlled States. Exercise your right to vote during every election. Racism existed since the creation of this nation. Work on yourself to rise above it.
18
I applaud Brent Staples for this essay.
Staples mentions the hostility that suffragettes had toward blacks. There are many other examples of female hostility to black rights and toward the Left in general.
In the beginning of the 20th century, many feminists were allied with the female "American Purity Movement" which saw fault with Catholics, Jews, foreigners, blacks and even garlic. The Women's Christian Temperance Union sought to extinguish not only alcohol but also the ubiquitous decadence that those icily anti-sexual women condemned.
In her diaries, Virginia Woolf, who was a hero to feminist English majors when I went to college, routinely maligned a Jewish female socialist for her allegedly grim proletarian outlook on life.
In every Presidential election from 1920 (shortly after women got the vote) through 1960, women were more likely than men to vote Republican.
Most important for us if how feminism has hurt black men today. FEMINISM OVERLOOKS THE GREATER DISCRIMINATION THAT BLACK MEN ENDURE IN CONTRAST TO BLACK WOMEN.
IT'S VERY SIMPLE: Many whites fear black men, fearing an alleged propensity for violence or crime. Ergo, they do not hire black men. However, they do not fear black women and black women are hired. For the past 40 and 50 years, feminism has kept this out of the discourse.
13
@David Gottfried What is your evidence that Black women face less discrimination than Black men due to feminism?
1
@David Gottfried You mean well, and there is some truth to what you say about black men. But make no mistake, black women are also feared and treated second class in the workplace. I can tell you that firsthand.
"Judge not lest you be judged." Mr Staples, in 100 years, you may also be judged and found to come up lacking in some manner of thought of that time. It's absurd to denigrate those who in the past were not as "perfect" (by today's standards) as we'd like them to be. What they did was great and to say otherwise is appalling. When we have no heros left, we are left with a terrible void. And it would appear that today, many who teach or write about history want to do exactly that. It is very, very harmful to do this.
25
@India What is even more harmful is not knowing the truth. Hopefully with the truth we will do better. Mr. Staples is providing the information to help us understand we should know the full story, or we will regret that later. Our current political climate will prove this eventually to be true.
21
Taking what you said into consideration, isn’t there still a difference between white women not supporting blacks in their pursuit of the right to vote, and the disgusting sentiments of Elizabeth Cady Stanton regarding black men (as mentioned in the article)?
It’s one thing to not actively campaign alongside and for black people, but Stanton’s rhetoric was unforgivable and should rightfully be brought up in any discussion of her and the U.S. (white) women’s suffrage movement.
1
@India I do think you fail to understand historical study. It is possible now to examine the legacy of powerful people 150 years ago. It is important to learn and understand. No we do not need phony heroes - this entire attitude of yours is what creates these monsters, we need honesty about the good and less good and evil, truth and communication.
Whites Americans, and I include myself in that shade, have to acknowledge that without the mixed race population, that existed right from the founding of the colonies, the US would not be as strong as it is today. Throughout history, black leaders have challenged the truth of American principles. Without that test, the country would not value nor celebrate the strides made in living up to them.
The burden is a heavy one that no man or woman would voluntarily step up to carry but there it rests. Today, our country is standing at the brink because of an unworthy president. The strongest voices for rule of law, equal treatment under that law and standing up by kneeling down for the disenfranchised are coming from black leadership.
So hurrah for the 19th Amendment but look at the people who are still defending it and the entire Constitution. We should all be marching arm in arm to celebrate and acknowledge the struggles, victories, setbacks and tasks ahead.
7
So if your first assumption is correct why isn’t Africa the most advanced and moral nation in the world today?
1
No doubt you have heard the saying: The first casualty of war is the truth. White women were fighting a war to gain the vote against primarily white men. Possibly they felt they could fight on only one front at a time. Wars are never about what is right, but how to win. Virtually all of white America had racist views at the time. Had they embraced their black sisters they might well have lost the battle. That is certainly not a moral excuse, but possibly a calculated strategic decision. I have no idea whether these women who were fighting for their right to vote were actually racists or whether they just said to themselves we can't win this one today. Lets just win what we can win. In a struggle, a war or any fight winning is everything, not morality.
19
Men of any race or color had the right to vote in this country before any woman of any race or color. Sexism is the original dividing line to, well, divide people. It still is. A battle was fought by some women for the right vote. It was a good fight and it still is. Have a little respect.
31
@Kathleen Tague"Men of any race or color had the right to vote in this country before any woman of any race or color."
That's not true nor is it supported by southern history where denying the right to vote to black men was something people died for in this country as recently as 50 years aago.
2
In this country, rich white women still have more privilege than rich black men. I can't respect that. Our history has been more racist than sexist. There is still more unpunished, blatant, public violence against black men than against white women.
1
It's easy to tear down key historical figures for the battles they did not fight, rather than celebrating (proportionately) the ones they did fight.
Notwithstanding that it's overdue and completely fair to go beyond 5th-grade hagiographies of historical figures and to show that they, too, are complex and flawed characters, what I'm not sure is fair is to condemn them by abstracting them from their historical context and judging them by today's standards, rather than than in the entirety of their embedded relationships in their contemporary circumstances.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in 1815, more than two centuries ago, and it is almost impossibly for most of us to be able to put ourselves mentally in an identical place or to disentangle ideas about women's suffrage from prevailing societal beliefs about rights and personhood.
Without being "whataboutist", the civil rights leaders of the 1960s had ideas about homosexuality that are out of tune with today's greater acceptance of GLBT rights, despite a number of critical figures being gay or bisexual; should we attenuate our celebration of civil rights heroes because of that?
40
@Mollykins
No we should not attenuate our celebration of civil rights because of past leaders' refusal to acknowledge LGBT rights--but we should tell the truth about them.
That seems to be all Mr. Staples is asking. Tell the complete history.
3
The civil rights leaders at that time were Christian ministers. Homosexuality was and still is seen as an abomination in most black churches. But that doesn’t stop Democratic politicians from begging for votes out of their pulpits. And by the way, a black openly gay man named Bayard Rustin was one of the original organizers of the March on Washington.
1
Divide and conquer is the master’s game.
Celebrate the 19th Amendment along with the 15th. Give credit where credit is due (and Elizabeth Cady Stanton deserves a lot of credit) without pretending flawed historical figures were immaculate saints. Be thankful for the good we’ve gained through earlier generations’ struggles, and learn from their failures so as to bend the arc of history further towards justice.
74
Unfortunately a lot of women's suffrage history was hijacked by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and crew because they wrote the 6 volume history and downplayed the efforts for women's suffrage that started in Massachusetts with Lucy Stone, abolitionist. Read Barbara Berenson's "Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement: Revolutionary Reformers" to see that yes, the Stanton contingent focused on National reforms while the Stone contingent focused on the States and they had a falling out over strategy. There were many different voices involved in women's suffrage, not just Stanton and Anthony. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Woman_Suffrage_Association
16
To me the more abstract issue this article brings up is how we should commemorate ideas and political victories. Currently we do it, most often, by finding individuals associated with those ideas and victories, and commemorating them. But individual people are flawed.
It would be nice to find the best role models generally to make statues of, and I certainly agree that when commemorating the suffragette movement we should be commemorating the vital role played by black women (and for that matter black men like Frederick Douglass); after all, wanting and fighting for the vote for women is hardly a "white woman" thing, even if there's a tendency to remember the history that way.
But most historical figures associated with great ideas and great victories will be deeply flawed. They can't BE regarded as people to model oneself after; at most, one might want to model a single trait that they had.
But I don't know if there is a realistic way of seeing commemorative statues of individuals in this way--as mere symbols of particular ideas and not of some of the other (often awful) ideas that those very same individuals espoused, as in the case of Elizabeth Cady Stanton--or if we we'd be better off finding other ways of celebrating ideas and advances than by celebrating individuals.
16
I've always felt that Anthony and Stanton did what they could (two women, for godsakes) to bring the vote to white and black women. I think they eventually realized that they would lose the entire effort if they continued to push for racial justice AND votes for women. In the end they chose to focus on votes for women--which they died without accomplishing. They went to their graves knowing they abandoned one part of their mission in order to try and accomplish something. In their defense, they were battling racism AND prejudice against women at the same time. I'd like to see a duo of men taking that on at that time or anytime. Susan Anthony (no relation)
26
@SJA Correct, and more nuances along the same lines: as portrayed in Ken Burns' documentary "Not for Ourselves Alone," Stanton and Anthony themselves had a falling out over whether the women's rights focus should be a broader one on social justice or more narrowly on getting the vote. They fought with little success for these causes for over fifty years, and Anthony argued that the social justice couldn't be achieved without first getting the vote. She was right. This article is a prime example of feeding the establishment by making the perfect the enemy of the possible.
4
I see no evidence Stanton ever wanted to battle racial prejudice. Wanting rights for yourself does not automatically translate into fighting for the rights of others. And this goes for any oppressed group. Some see a universal struggle for freedom, and others just see their own.
It's not about having racial views ahead of your time (though some people did). It's about not being a hypocrite. Stanton knew what most men thought of women's capacities, and resented it. She knew what they thought of black people's capacities, and agreed with it.
This was not true of all women who fought for the vote. It comes down to personality. Not color, gender, etc. Some people can see past their own grievances. Others can't. Some people can see past differences. Others can't.
1
Anthony and Stanton formed the Women's National Loyal League in 1863 to support passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery. It was the first national women's political organization in the United States and gathered over 400,000 signatures (the most ever for any campaign in the U.S. at that time) along with funding to support emancipation.
https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/civil_war/WomensNati...
Anthony read a proclamation at their first convention saying; "There can never be true peace in this republic until the civil and political rights of all citizens of African descent and all Women are practically established."
The 14th Amendment excluded women and women of color equal protection of the law, and with passage of the 15th Amendment the right to vote. Anthony and Stanton became frustrated and " bitterly disillusioned" with the process.
Anthony did continue to work through letter writing, editorials, and publishing her own paper "The Revolution" for the right of all people to be allowed the right to vote regardless or race or gender. She spoke out against racism and lynchings into the 1890's.
http://susanbanthonyhouse.org/her-story/biography.php
These women did not seek the vote as of symbol or parity. They sought equal protection of the law and the right to vote as civil rights not to be denied to anyone.
56
Thank you, Mr. Staples, for this important reminder. Among the recent writings you cite in support of your message, let me add one more: Chapters 3 and especially 4 in Angela Davis, Women, Race & Class. It was published more than 35 years ago and at the time was attacked by some of the most prominent white feminists of that time. From the look of some comments here it doesn't appear that things have changed much since then.
12
@waynemorse
Please cite the prominent white women feminist historians who attacked the book. If I remember it was widely praised and for the past 45 plus years Angela David continues to be one of the most widely read and respected feminist writers and thinkers, much because of her commitment to internationalism and intersectionality.
8
I dislike when other women say "so says a man" to discredit an argument, but when Staples suggests that white women were jailed, went on hunger strike, were force fed, and risked their lives for a "symbol of parity" with their husbands and brothers, it's hard not to see it as male tone deafness on brilliant display. Frankly, it's as racist and sexist a remark as I can imagine. It diminishes the very real struggle we women have endured simply to be considered as deserving fundamental human rights. The right to be considered not just as equal, but in some cases as human beings with intelligence and a soul.
76
@Todd Fox So true. It raises once again this fictitious character of the wealthy, spoiled white woman who had everything she wanted and no responsibilities but insisted on causing trouble by demanding rights equal to men's for no good reason. Poor white women, working white women, white women beaten, raped and killed by the men who controlled them, are deemed never to have existed. Articles like this are sickening propaganda.
3
I believe you are purposely misrepresenting Staples point so you can can his racist. I have yet to hear a cogent explanation from a feminist why the majority of white women would vote for Trump after hearing in his own words how he sexually assaulted them, and for a Roy Moore after he was credibly accused of molesting their teenage daughters. What white women want is not equality for all, but to be the equal of white men in our unequal society.
2
It is somewhat disappointing that the NY Times has this kind of person on its editorial board. Mr. Staples seems bent on re-living and re-hashing the negatives of the past and not focused on the positives of the present and the future.
Presumably, for his next column, he will focus on the unfairness of the caveman days and the ways in which people killed each other in territorial disputes and the manner in which they failed to communicate effectively with each other, often acting unfairly.
According to his profile, Mr. Staples holds a PhD in psychology. Hopefully, that profession has made progress since he obtained his degree. Are we to harp on the inadequacies of his profession in the past, when compared to where it is today? Should Mr. Staples apologize for the fact that his profession did not get some things right?
It would be more constructive for Mr. Staples to look at the context of history - and realize that, on many fronts, we are simply moving forward - sometimes in leaps and bounds and sometimes in small increments. And to be grateful for that.
35
@Maurice Gatien To claim that Mr. Staples is solely re-living and re-hashing the negatives of the past is a misrepresentation. Far too many negatives of the past (and the present) related to how people of color have been/are treated in society are seen as not important by the "mainstream" white culture. This can't be ignored and people like Mr. Staples are correct to remind us all. Until everyone realizes the harm caused by the negatives of the past and how that harm continues to impact how people are treated today, things will not change nor people of color treated equally, in spite of the law. To state that anyone should be grateful for small increments sounds very much like telling someone to be patient as they are mistreated in a myriad of ways large and small in today's world. In such a world patience is not a virtue.
16
@Maurice Gatien
I appreciate Mr. Staples's insights and I am glad he wrote this article. I was unaware of most of this story and I am glad to know it. it makes so much more sense to me now why some women of color pulled out of the Women's March. I had no idea about anteceedents. I hope that these ideas are part of the of the centennial of the 19th ammendment in 2020. That is part of how we move forward, by understanding clearly and in detail, what has happened before. Being told to march at the back of a parade --that disrespect and humilitation never gets forgotten, and I am not in the mood to let those humiliations continue unaddressed as a result of not knowing. We move forward, first by knowing more and second, by never forgetting the golden rule in our present behavior. Both parts are required.
2
@Rowland I would have more respect for Mr. Staples if he hadn't spent the entire thing attacking Stanton and instead gave examples and praise to the women of color who fought for equality of women. Instead, he only lists their complaints against the others. I have come away from this article no wiser about the black women who fought for the vote than I was before. What I read was about how a man, Douglass, saved the movement and how one of its leaders, Stanton, doesn't deserve any praise for her role because she was a bigot.
I know that your statement about how many white people don't want to admit or deal with how people of color were treated in the past (and currently) is a bitter truth. I could say the same for the history of women, but it is not a contest. Women have a different situation in that their social status ranges from high to low.
However, I would say that if we looked closely at many of the male black civil rights leaders, you'd find some rather ugly views on women and homosexuals. And I know that because I knew some of them. I heard some pretty gross things about bitches and 'hos and that women's rights were just privileged white woman whining. Not all black men are Frederick Douglass. Should I object to them getting praise and honor for what they did fight for?
2
One of the reasons the state of Georgia was adamant about not passing women's suffrage prior to the passage of the 19th Amendment was that the political establishment feared it would lead to black women demanding the right to vote. When the 19th Amendment did pass, the Georgia State Legislature sent a firmly worded letter to Congress, indicating that they did not agree with the passage, that they knew they had to accept it, but that they didn't endorse or like it. Then they placed a number of restrictions on when/how (white) women could vote, even after the 19th Amendment was ratified (e.g., residency requirements and a six-month restriction of voting in the first election following the ratification). It was not until 1970 that the Georgia Legislation sent a letter to Congress formally retracting the state's objections to the 19th Amendment. (I've been doing research for a novel I'm writing about a woman from Georgia whom I'm created at as suffragist.) Some of the quotes I've uncovered from men AND women in Georgia during the times you're quoting here are right in line with the Stanton ones.
12
It appears that the 2018 Georgia legislature hasn’t learned a thing from its own history. This Republican-dominated body is still in the business of impeding or denying minorities’ access to the voting booth. Old habits never die.
1
Maude Malone, New York City’s suffragette leader was one white woman who would not stand for discrimination among suffragists. Sadly she seems to be a lone voice. She lead an amazing life and deserves a biography some day.
A great primary source corroborating what this article speaks of is this 1921 article in the Nation Magazine.
https://www.thenation.com/article/alice-paul-pulls-strings/
10
Women and men of good will who recognize the racism and misogyny embedded in American life and culture face a complex and difficult task when writing/thinking about the history of past struggles against these deep stains and strains in our nation’s life. The evidence of racism and sexism touching those engaged in heroic efforts to overturn these twin evils inevitably touched those who immersed themselves in the struggle. After all, they were only flawed human beings as are we all. So as historians and celebrants of their struggles, we need to be cognizant of how we weigh evidence of failings against goals achieved. Ideals achieved too often emerge light on the scales of history as compared to the weight given human missteps, momentary hypocrisy, selling out to political pragmatism. We live in a materialist, cynical world. As we find ourselves saying more and more: we know the price of everything but the value of nothing. Feminists of the past knew the value of what they dedicated their lives to even if they sometimes chose to pay a price we now, reasonably secure in what they achieved, are prone to probe and overweight.
6
Does the author also want the bane of sexism to be central to the struggle for racial civil rights? After all just to cite one example not one woman spoke at the march on Washington in1963. The same charge could also be made at the early gay rights movement.
47
@Mal Stone
Your comment that no woman spoke at the March on Washington is the very reason we need objective and corrective histories like what Mr. Staples presents here.
Maybe you have heard that the Civil Rights era was full of sexism, and you are simply repeating a myth that was told to you. Maybe you need to dig a little further.
Uniformed and somewhat unrecognizable, Josephine Baker spoke at the March on Washington.
1
The author might recall that black men got the right to vote two generations before white or black women. Sexism is older and more pervasive than racism. And it takes no magic to separate blackness from femaleness as femaleness is a biologic construct and blackness is a social construct. Even today women are more disenfranchised. About 19% of Congress is non-white, and about 19% are women. But women are over 50% of the population so are more underrepresented. This editorial is another male attempt, this time using racism as an argument, to cleave the women's rights movement which lags the anti-racism movement worldwide.
77
My Greek-American mom, whose parents were not born in the US, could vote in the north in the 1950s. African-American men and women, whose ancestors had lived in this country for hundreds of years, could not vote in the south in the 1950s.
3
@Epistemology Dunno what you mean by sexism or racism, but the two of the oldest forms of economic activity, along with husbandry, are slavery and prostitution.
1
@Epistemology, I care about these issues, too, but to say that because we are under-represented we are therefore disenfranchised is false.
1
This is especially interesting in light of the fact that the situation hasn't changed much to this day. Mainstream feminism seems to be driven by the interests of white professionals, while so called radical feminism seeks to blame all problems on men. There seems to be little interest in the problems of working class women.
11
"White women were seeking the vote as a symbol of parity with their husbands and brothers. " -- No, they didn't want it as a "symbol." They wanted their vote, and thus their opinions/needs/beliefs to carry weight and mean something. Also, I'm not sure how you can completely deny any understanding of why women thought it unfair that there was a new amendment allowing men (yes, black men) to vote while they (including black women) still did not have a vote. They didn't want the black men to NOT be able to vote; they wanted women to be able to vote.
72
The National Woman Suffrage Association was born out of the post civil war debate regarding suffrage. They were angry that suffrage had gone to black men and not white women.
These women wanted the vote because it was their right as citizens to be represented.
10
@Gusting
No. Suffragists, black and white were angry that the 15th Amendment denied the vote to all women - African American, Latina, Chinese, Filipina, Indigenous, Japanese.
2
There is quit a bit of defensiveness in these responses to Mr. Staples pointing out the well documented racist views of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
3
It is a sad fact that a schism emerged following the 14th and 15th amendments. Susan B Anthony had called for a merger of groups fighting for Black rights and women's rights. She called for a push for universal suffrage. Unfortunately, the politics of the times led men, including Frederick Douglass, to drop the idea and push for Black male suffrage. This was seen as a betrayal by the women who had worked so hard to help end slavery and were now being told to step back.
If folks had stood together back then, it may have taken longer to get the rights from the 14th adn 15th and 19th amendments, but they may have been more durable than what came from those efforts.
33
@Steve For an alternative critique see the piece by Ta-Nehsi Coates, "The Great Schism" http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/10/the-great-schism/246...
Candy Stanton could have championed inclusiveness in the suffragist movement. While this would have been a laudable goal, it probably would have meant that the battle for women to be recognized as human beings, worthy of being considered equal, and given the right to vote, would not have been won during her lifetime. Instead she chose to focus on winning the right to vote. It was the first win in a series of civil rights victories which continues to this day.
In short Stanton was a tactician. She chose her battles and prioritized winning what she could. She left behind a legacy for others to enlarge and expand upon. She laid the cornerstone. It's our job to continue the work.
12
I cannot claim any knowledge about Candy Stanton other than what I have read in this article but Todd Fox's claim of her being a tactician is only a supposition. The article quite clearly suggests that Candy Stanton was not being tactical in her ignoring of black people but instead was simply acting on her beliefs of what was right. Mr. Staples offers at least some evidence that this is the case but Todd Fox offers none for his contention. I feel inclined to give more weight to Mr. Staples' view.
3
Dr. Staples' OP-ED columns ought to be required for our young people. He not only brings up a (not always pleasant) recent past (that people like me have lived through), but he also shares knowledge that those of us, who are not specialists in these fields, would ordinarily not encounter. This continuous learning for people like me (and for most readers of The Times) is especially valuable in these contentious times.
16
As a product of 1960's public school education I am once again having my eyes opened to the realities of what really happened with regards to social change in America. I cannot remember seeing one black face in my state history lessons nor in American history. Still, it's nice to learn that there were black suffragists, yet sad that historians chose to erase their existence during that movement, like so many others.
25
I have read about racism with the Suffrage movement before, so this comes as no surprise to me. And i dson't think the times they lived in should be taken as an excuse. Feminists then could have, and should have fought for the rights of all, if Anthony, Stanton et all were visonary enough to envision the vote for women, they should have realized it for all women, reguardless of race.
Something along these lines played out with the second wave and the "lavender menace." We had common ground with striaght feminists, but like with race, Fredan, NOW and the others could have and should have included us. I am glad that straight femeists eventually came around, but there is one more fight not mentioned here that must be fought.
I have had discrimination based on my disability from able feminists, even as I and we have much in common. We being other disabled feminists. We must be included too, unconditionally, and right now, so that we can be truly tolerant, diverse, and inclusive.
7
@Andrea W. Easy for you to say. It wasn't that long ago that very few straight people were voicing their support for LGBTQ communities. Even President Obama said that it was too soon. Everything in context.
6
@Julie,
can't put this on President Obama, leave it right at the feet of the feet of Feminist: women.
Feminist started the revolution and feminist need to accept responsibility for their narrow vision.
@Julie Yes, Obama failed to support the rights of a vulnerable community just as Obama failed to support access to the morning-after pill by pregnant girls. So what? All this proves is that Obama was a social conservative, which we've known all along.
In the Second Wave, the straight feminists did not love their lesbian sisters as much and as well as they should have and it is fair to say that we betrayed them in some ways. Yes, we were homophobic in thinking of the lesbians as a political liability, a "lavender menace". And yet, we loved them more and better than most because we were fighting for an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution that would have included all of the sisters, gay and straight. I have no patience for the armchairbacking of those who would condemn our graceless efforts on their behalf, unless they can first show me their bona fides on the long arc toward social justice.
When I consider the efforts of heroes like Ida B. Wells and Susan B. Anthony, I try not to take heroics for granted.
14
@Eleanor Harris Straight, white, professional feminists look after the interests of their own. That's political reality.
1
As we have seen throughout history, many imperfect human beings have done great things but let's not trash or diminish their accomplishments.
Regardless of whether or not the leading white feminists were or were not racist, they were dealing with the political reality of the time in which they lived and they dealt with that as best they could in order to achieve the goal of getting the vote for women. Of course in a perfect world -- the Founding Fathers wouldn't have tolerated or even endorsed slavery and they'd have give men and women the vote. But again -- they were imperfect men trying to form a country no longer ruled by a king and as a result they did what they felt was achievable but not necessarily perfect in the eyes of future generations.
17
@Sherr29 Slavery is not merely imperfect, it is evil and a sin against mankind. The Founding Fathers don’t get a pass nor the white suffragists who were less than willing to view black suffragists as equal to themselves. The good or noble deed does not excuse the evil that men-and women- do to other human beings.
1
Any movement, any time in history as is true today involves racism. Racism is also known as ignorance. The word ignorance is important to note. To ignore.
Within every racial and religious group - I myself belong to a multitude of these groups has historically shown aspects of racism.
My immediate family showed none however were of course recipients of racism/ignorance.
Due to their skin color (sometimes darker)their religion (some were Roman Catholic, some halachicly (most radical and strict rules of determining who is a Jew) "pure."
My point is we all must remember one thing and that we belong to the human race.
Let's stop arguing and get together as American citizens.
I applaud the author for his insight and reporting. On the other hand I would welcome more articles that brought us all more together as the human race and in case anyone is wondering, yes, I have ancestry from Africa also and in the not too distant past...
I have also lived in multiple other countries and speak, as most U.S. Citizens more than 2 languages fluently, a few I can "get along" with.
No country has been perfect, no time in history is perfect.
I can assume the women who were not recognized with statues would not have wanted nor needed statues in their honor.
After all, it is the deeds we leave behind that count.
5
Thank you for this. The suffragist movement abandoned black men, too, in part by way of courting the sympathy and affirmation of a white patriarchy that defined true womanhood as a model of unsullied white virtue. Indeed, I think many suffragists regarded themselves as paragons of virtue whose votes were needed to perpetuate white dominance in this country by way of protecting children from so-called racial contamination. I can see that racist DNA in the views of white liberal woman today who believe they are exemplars of non-racist virtue even while they fight to ensure their kids don’t attend diverse schools. In that context, political correctness just becomes another form of elitism. Accidental use of trigger words is low-class—like not knowing which fork is which at a fancy restaurant. I think feminism needs a reckoning. I’m not giving up on it, but I do think it has to be shorn of this racist inheritance. Without that, it’s just another way to perpetuate the injustice we call the status quo.
10
Myopic thinking is an unfortunate part of human nature. Inward looking has limited who was seen as women, as humans deserving of liberty, as true Americans, as good immigrants, as entitled to marry, and more.
But there is nothing to do with the past except to learn from it. We have to be aware of who is excluded now from any umbrella term or from any right. Let's offer a seat at the table to those who have been left out.
8
As a second generation American, always proud of being born on S. Anthony’s birthday, this has been enlightening. My premise is that I and others not long on a USA heritage, bought into the idea that, we are liberals and the history of racism was not ours. But it is! I’ve been woke for a long time; I know that by birth it is my history too. As a white woman, I have had privilege. To not be woke is to be complicit.
9
@bmtnyc However “woke” you think you are, you could be “woken”, which is kinda the point of the article.
The American Revolution betrayed most white, all African Americans, enslaved or freed, the indigenous, the poor and women. Let's have a headline like that next July 4th. The abolitionist movement betrayed many of its own; so did the various anti-war anti-imperialist peace movements. So did the labor movement. Let's have a Labor Day piece on Eugene Debs and his racism, as if this sums up his entire life. As a historian of the women's movement and of women's suffrage, I am always fascinated, frustrated and disappointed that the women's suffrage movement the women's rights and women's liberation movements are the ONLY progressive social movements that get attacked for racism. I
I wish Brent Staples had included Sojourner Truth's statement about the Fifteenth Amendment: "There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again." Truth was one of our first intersectional feminists.
Many of us who are working on suffrage commemorations are aware of our past, and are doing all we can to address it. I also wish Brent Staples had contacted some us to see what is being done before
113
Why do people continually judge folks who lived long long ago by today’s standards.
Aristotle, Plato, Jefferson, Washington, Lincoln, etc. can never meet today’s standards of conduct or speech.
Nobody living today will meet the standards existing 150 years from now.
Do we need to make everyone a victim so badly that we destroy all respect or honor for our past leaders and great thinkers ?
73
Jefferson originally opposed slavery, then edited it out to compromise with slaveholders (like himself). Wilberforce in England was fighting to abolish slavery at the same time. Abigail Adams said "remember the women," but women's rights were compromised, too. So there have always been people to criticize and oppose what we knew all along, were wrong: racism and sexism.
4
@Really? That's right. Can't judge Jesus by today's standards.
2
@Really? This is what historical study and thinking is about. I bet you want to believe that George Washington really did cut down that cherry tree. History is written over and over again so we can digest, assimilate, make new conclusions and move on.
1
Harriet Tubman was the bravest and most active woman suffragist. She risked her life many times to rescue enslaved people from slave states. She was very early in seeing the connection between slavery and all women's rights. She saw typical marriage as the enslavement of the female even as she craved for a husband. After she risked her life to convey escaping slaves on the underground railroad to freedom in the north, she followed up with providing food, housing, and education in the north. She helped black people buy houses - rightly seeing freedom as requiring adequate financial resources, food, medicine, and housing. Harriet attended suffragist meetings and was praised at such meetings. She knew Frederick Douglas. I don't know why so much attention is paid to a few white leaders such as Stanton. Women's movements tend to be run much more horizontally than men's movements. Women make decisions in different ways. The suffragist movement was diffuse and took many forms, some of the most successful humorous! It is safe to say that most white people of the 19th century were racists, as they remain today. But they believed in equal rights for black and white people even as they practiced segregation socially (as many still do today). Tubman was a genius - eloquent, funny, a fighter, and the bravest woman I have ever read about. She is my hero. I hate that the male media try to separate women and divide them vertically - it perpetuates hatred and ignorance. Stop.
32
Frederick Douglas's comments about women not facing the same degree of danger ignored the real dangers many faced from their husbands. It may not have been as widespread, but since abused women had no rights to property once married, they usually could not easily escape from a violent man. In the fifties, I remember hearing that the Bible said women should be subject to their husbands. Ministers counseled women that the violence would stop when they were better women.
Is the violence that did happen while a wife was in the kitchen or in bed with her husband equivalent to slavery? It is all bad.
I used to think only a misogynist would ignore violence against women. Now I just think they are lazy thinkers or escapists.
28
Entire communities of black people--men and women--were massacred, in the south and elsewhere.
Nothing like that ever happened to white women in America. It's not just a question of how widespread it was. It simply wasn't evil on the same scale, and of course it wasn't something the vote itself would end, since a hundred years later, that kind of thing still happens.
And for that matter, sometimes (often!) gay men and lesbians are abused by their partners. And the vote doesn't address that either. It's something women should always have had (bearing in mind that most men didn't have it for most of history), but let's not pretend it was the answer to everything.
Black women suffered all the same problems as white women. On top of racism.
Is this some kind of contest? "Who is the most oppressed?" What do you get if you win?
1
Betrayal, or making the best deal possible when not coming from a position of strength?
20
A fabulous article. Great subject. Indeed. Feminism isn't a modern phenomenon. Suppression and racism bore important activists, bringing civil rights discussions by black females to the forefront. Exposing oppression. Addressing the horror of lynching. Of patriarchy. Of attempts to limit voting rights by gender. Organizing for demands for reform and political rights. Confronting white suffragettes willing to throw their black sisters under the bus. It should be part of the curriculum of her-story classes in our schools. Glad I checked back to The Times and saw this piece.
6
As in too many chefs ruin the soup. Too many doctors destroy the patient.
1
In American history, there are many cases where minorities are "airbrushed" from the actual scene. Only a few people are lionized and often times, those in the "trenches" are conveniently forgotten. That there were black women that were involved is not disputed. In the recent season -2018 TLC's WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE- Laverne Cox, learned of a many time Great-grandmother involved in the movement for the vote in Alabama. When we commemorate these events, we are not good at remembering the reasons and just think at the present time. With just a limited view, we do a great disservice for the present, not remembering the hard steps it took. And that we can celebrate and there is still a lot more work to be done.
5
Agreed, agreed. But enormous social changes require steps that are often accompanied by missteps. All social movements have imperfect leaders. Do we therefore toss the leaders aside along with their fights and progress? Remember that at its root, it was the white male government/power structure that betrayed black men, black women, white women, native americans, etc., etc., etc.
To pit these groups against each other was a way to drive wedges between them, and weaken their progress. Let's record accurately what was said and done -- good and bad -- and examine the context and make evaluations. But not write-off historical figures -- there won't be any to celebrate.
7
Whenever we study historical figures we have to look at the world through their eyes and not judge them by current cultural beliefs and values but, rather, by the prevailing cultural standards of their time. It is unfair to do otherwise.
29
@Aaron Adams
I disagree. There are many who share the cultural standards many hold today. Giving a pass to those who weren't capable of doing what others did as a matter of course is and insult to the memory of those who suffered mightily at the hand of those holding the "prevailing cultural standards". I believe the quote used in this opinion piece says it best. I'm sure that there were more than a few white men and women who agreed with him at that time.
10
@FDRT Yes, we should call out the inherent biases within political movements when retelling history. That's why I'm looking forward to Mr. Staples next Op-Ed Titled "How the Civil Rights Movement Betrayed Black Women."
1
We also have to keep in mind that black women and men did not like the way they were marginalized and terrorized back then either. It's not just in hindsight.
1
Thank you. The telling of truths and the correction of historical lies is vital to the creation/fight for a "real democracy" as we face ourselves and each other during this very dark period. The interdependent constructs of "whiteness" and "blackness," continues to support a society that is not fair, not equal, and, which is downright deadly and dehumanizing to black and brown people (the correctional system, Flint MI water supply, police brutality, children separated from parents and put in the equivalent of kennels to name only some). While it is fair and important to consider historical context when thinking about white suffragists and progress made, that context also depended upon and exploited unabashed racism. These truths coexist together. To separate them in the present is to contribute to the increasing polarization and denial of reality that is fueling our steady slide backwards. The centennial provides an excellent opportunity to understand American history in a way that honors the truth and complexity that created it. I write this comment as a progressive white woman who has discovered over the last several years just how little I was taught/learned about American history beyond a very narrow and very misleading interpretation. While painful, sobering, and more than a little appalling, this discovery has been enormously liberating.
10
@Laura P. thank you. As a person of color I applaud your honest reflection on history. Many of us were taught the same white washed version of american history and as young people thought the propaganda was real history. I was shocked to meet real historians in a university setting and relearn american history. I was shocked that much of what I learned as history were lies. American history has a dark stain of racism that cannot be eliminated through propaganda.
13
@Laura P. Well said.
1
Thank you. My overriding chant, at the beginning of every course I teach, is, "Who defines the terms by which we live?" Sojourner Truth. Frederick Douglass. Harriet Tubman. Mary Church Terrell. Ida B. Wells. Ella Baker. Audre Lorde. And so many others took the prevailing definitions and restructured them into something that still challenges us all.
8
Thank you for writing this piece. I was aware of some of the dark side (ha!) of suffragist history and it is good to see more of it here. Despite the 15th and 19th amendments, I knew for sure that black people did not get the right to vote until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in the mid-1960s. It is instructive to know all aspects of American history including the parts that may be difficult for some to hear. Whitewashing (again ha!) the facts helps no one.
17
Thank you Mr. Stephens
Mention of the fierce abolitionist sisters, the Grimkes, (how come we never learned about them in school?) who were subjected to opposition in the abolitionist movement b/c they had the gall to try and roll in women's rights, would have been a good footnote to this informative article.
18
Mr. Staple's opinion piece reveals a different perspective on this part of our nations’s history. His research and conclusions into the shortcomings of those who worked in, and led the suffragette movement in this country, should not embolden present day observers to chastise him personally, or those about whom he writes. Instead, it should encourage us to examine our own activism and thus lessen the chances of our creating the same offenses to those already disenfranchised, and on whose behalf we advocate.
Legendary figures from history are often discovered to have been imperfect. This is not the value in what Mr. Staple writes. It’s value lies in what we do with that information. Can we examine our own motivations as they affect the positions we champion, and the causes to which we lend our support? Scrutinizing the imperfections of those who worked in the past on behalf of minorities and women should allow for honest reflection inward of our reasons and methods for achieving the same goals today and into the future, as were sought in the past. In so doing, we are reminded (sadly) that in many ways parity for women and people of color remains unattained. We must do better, and we must allow our personal imperfections their space while working toward greater goals for all. In turn, we as individuals might understand, overcome, and get past some of our own prejudices. This is when we as a nation will evolve and become something better, brighter, and more noble.
16
Thank you, thank you and thank you for writing this piece. One for my daughter, one for my granddaughter and one from me. This clarifies a great deal.
14
So now we can only evaluate historical figures based on a single dimension, ignoring all other dimensions and any positive that came from them.
43
@jaco
If that is all you got from this opinion piece then you are part of the simple minded problem. Nowhere in this piece are the accomplishments of the noted white suffragettes disparaged, nowhere. What the opinion piece notes is the generally ignored ugly side of that movement. Guess what, there was sexism in the Civil Rights movement. Both undertakings had their fair share of flaws regarding acknowledging other groups (i.e., class and sexual identity). Just because you take note of this doesn't diminish what they accomplished, just reminds you that the people who were involved in making our world a better place were just as human and faulty as we are today. Yet they moved the needle forward and we reap the benefits but also have a long way to go.
60
This is a very interesting article. As I have watched our Republic unravel over the last few decades I have often wondered if universal suffrage makes any sense at all. Maybe the color issue and the gender issues are blinding us to another division that should be respected. Maybe everyone should have to pass a basic literacy, government, history and science test if they want to hold office or vote. Half of the population has an IQ less than 100. That has to be as it is the nature of test scoring. Do you believe all our legislators and our voters could identify every country on the map where we have troops? Could they tell Iraq from Iran? Can they tell CO2 from CH4? Modern technological society seems to have outpaced the ability of the voters to comprehend and make reasonable decisions. Color is no longer the issue.....it is reasoning capacity by both voters and elected officials.
7
@AS
If only it were that simple. These issues exist because of color (race/ethnicity) and gender. Part of the problem is the belief in a meritocracy that never has existed. How resources are allocated (or rather misallocated) in terms of education, housing and health is the problem. In this world, life is organized around who you are and whether you are worthy of being treated like a human being. Most with the means and power to do something about it, join with others, generally don't believe (or want to believe) it is a problem or they don't care. When those without power demand better, the way things are structured the system rewards the powerful for ignoring society as a whole.
5
Forgive me if your comment was intended as parody, but it should be pointed out that half the population does NOT have an IQ below 100. That's not how the test works.
Thank-you for such an informative article. It is so important to acknowledge ALL our history.
The legacy of some in the suffragist movement continued to play out in the way working-class women's issues were ignored during the women's movement of the 1970's. Uncovering some of the warts is not going to downplay the power of the movement. An honest look at our history should help us to move forward in a substantive way where the bottom line will truly be equal rights for all.
11
Great article and great reminder to keep the entirety of history in our memories.
8
Yes, only some suffragettes were abolitionists and only some abolitionists were not racists. The remarkable thing about people is that all agree with the visionary statement of, ‘.. we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...” as it applies to themselves but not often to others. There are always excuses found to not follow the golden rule and to treat others with no consciences. Even when people are not trying to exploit others they will treat strangers as enemies and members of other groups with who their own groups have ancient resentments over ancient wrongs as enemies, too.
If we look deeply enough, hardly ever can we find a truly golden and benevolent person. If we want a more just and peaceful world we can only deal with one issue with imperfect people at a time and hope that the better outcomes prevail.
7
"Historians are rightly warning groups involved in suffrage commemorations not to overstate the significance of the 19th Amendment. " This seems overstated. We can explore the nuances and shortcomings of the suffrage movement while acknowledging the importance of the 19th Amendment. After all - it was significant enough to amend the Constitution.
29
I am genuinely afraid that obscuring the notable work of the suffrage movement by somehow scraping to find fatal flaws within the positions of some its founders will only serve to stall the progress we have made as feminists and progressives. It ironically reminds me of how uncomfortable I feel when people remind me smugly of MLK's indiscretions or Gandhi's. Also, the leader should be separate from the larger issue he or she is trying to promote. Stanton was a leading figure in the suffrage movement but she was not alone. She represented a zeitgeist, a demand for justice shared by thousands of women.
Given this, I also view this era of feminism as foundational for America-- flaws and all. I do not think the feminism or feminisms we have now, which are intersectional and complex (thankfully) would have happened without this initial step. I would like to remind the author of the extreme barriers and challenges women such as Stanton and Mott faced when trying to secure a fundamental, democratic right, in the world's proudest democracy-- i.e voting. Misogyny and traditional attitudes toward women ran rampant then and were additionally deeply ingrained. This movement not only had to change public discourse but also had to penetrate private, deeply-seated beliefs-- patriarchal beliefs which have been replicated throughout centuries. Of course, they were not thoroughly correct on every issue, but as leaders they accomplished significant goals. I am personally indebted to them.
156
I agree with part of your opinion. Yet, I do not believe we should omit the other part of this story. Voting rights for African American were just has important as voting rights for women. It is a sad part of our history that the leaders, we revere, were not willing to stand up for all!
5
@Anja
Sorry, white women during the suffragette movement were flawed like Black men were flawed during the Civil Rights movement. Doesn't make what each accomplished any less important (with the hard work of Black women BTW) by acknowledging their flaws. It is in fact a way of honoring them as human. They were imperfect yet the managed to do something that made life better for the those of us who live today.
3
The dismissal of the rights of black women so that your own my be recognized is not a simple “flaw.” Diminishing our dismissal and our struggle down to a “flaw” understates the humanity of black women. The entire struggle of the visibility of black women is contained in what you want to include as an asterisk. We need to stop putting for the “best version” of history to keep the accomplishments of the subject intact. We’ve evolved as a society, out lens is wide enough to include everyone’s story.
4
Very nice reminder about an important aspect of the women's rights movement.
It is important to remember as well certain class aspects of the debate as well. Elite--well educated, and wealthy--white women objected that poor and immigrant white men who were barely literate could vote. They vehemently resented the sexism which led elite men to empower those men before they empowered their own mothers and sisters.
I like the argument that monuments to the suffragists could just as easily resemble the monuments honoring the Confederates.
The Northern suffragists won through making common cause with their sisters in the South to deny the rights of black women who needed them the most, as they were disadvantaged by race as well as gender. After the civil war, Northerners made peace with their Southern brethren by rejecting black civil rights altogether.
16
@Barbara
Immigrant - i.e. at that time = white and mostly Catholic - as well as black males are the ones who chose own self interests, sexism and misogyny over the rights of their mothers, grandmothers, sisters, wives, daughters, neighbors...
Thanks for kind of a movement-level #MeToo post.
I was blessed to be raised at the intersection of the racial justice and feminist movements, and the story of feminist racism is far from over (nor is the story of racial justice sexism, but that is not what this article is about. Please respond by writing an article as clear as this one.)
The take home for allies -- people seeking to heal these wounds and move beyond them -- is in Mr. Staples' excellent closing paragraph. Celebrate the heroism of suffragettes while acknowledging their racism. Redouble efforts to give _all_ women real power.
21
I was unaware of this history of racism in the women’s suffrage movement and consider it quite disturbing. I suspect, however, that not all white Northern women who demanded the vote threw their darker sisters under the bus. Specifically, the women who went south with the Freedmen’s Bureau and who supported women’s suffrage later in their lives were unlikely to forget their Civil War roots. I’d love to see research on women such as Dr. Esther Hill Hawkes to find out if my guess is correct.
19
Reading this I just realized that my knowledge of american history is really limited...maybe I can be excused since I came from USSR in my 30's and until my retirement was basically struggling to work and survive.
I'm thinking that living in this dark era of american history shows how much progress was made, how much injustice overcome, and what a long way we still have to go. Considering the present dark times we're all experiencing right now, the past history should bring a bit of hope that again we can overcome and the struggle for the best nature of humanity never really ends.
19
What purpose does judging long dead icons through a modern lens serve? As an excuse to remove names from buildings, colleges, etc? I don't see it as particularly surprising that most people of a given time, even ones who did great things in a specific area were still people of their times with the social views and prejudices that were commonplace in their era. It all mostly seems irrelevant, but if the goal is to remove their works and accomplishments and even their names from respectable public discourse because of these post facto evaluations that is positively Orwellian and most be fought against.
105
@Todd It is important because history impacts the present. When white economically privelieged suffragists excluded women of color they further entrenched the ability of that population to access opportunities and equality. Today black Americans have higher rates of poverty, disease, mental illness etc etc etc specifically because of their historical treatment at the hands of a white majority. We must understand these dynamics in order to understand 1) modern feminism and what it is and who it favors 2) the power dynamics within social movements 3) how to move forward in a way that lifts all people. Also, while it seems a truism that in order for progress to happen it must be incremental, we can’t disregard history because it threatens the reputations of our heroes. Black women deserve to have their history witnessed and told. This is a very important story that I, as a white woman, and all of us, need to hear and grapple with. Thank you to the author for sharing it.
6
@Todd
I disagree. As we study our history and truths long hidden or minimized are revealed to us we need to listen to the messages of 'the whole truth'.
Many of our long standing heroes have clay feet and it is easier to look away from that rather than give up our traditional beliefs.
Most of us are contradictory in our actions and beliefs. To see this in others is to understand ourselves better.
" When we know better, we must do better". - Maya Angelou
5
Thank you for this wonderful article. Only one quibble, if you look further, I believe you will find that Lucretia Mott fought to combine racial equality with gender equality. She fought to go beyond abolition to working for equal rights for all.
35
How unfortunate it is when disenfranchised groups turn on each other! As we navigate an era where many women and racial minorities feel alienated by Trump’s America, may this be a reminder to the resistance that in our struggle to change our current nightmare, we must work—and not at odds—with one another. The stakes are far too high to do otherwise: Political infighting among identity groups is exactly what the Trumpites are counting on.
55
We cannot "all" join together without recognizing important truths. Sharing, teaching, learning, and discussing history and how it is represented is not about political infighting. The creation of and subsequent attack on "identity groups" is part of Trumpian/far right GOP propaganda. It is designed to make us all the more concerned about appearing "politically correct" and afraid. Drinking that cool aid is a choice, at least for now. I'm far more concerned about repeating history by pretending it didn't happen or happened according to a very narrow and exclusionary script. We have a chance to make history by confronting lies and misrepresentations both past and present. After WW11 the Germans faced themselves and the world and told the truth. Now that took guts!
5
@M. B. D. An awful lot of people seem to make money and names for themselves by picking a narrow group and denigrating the rest....
1
Womens' suffrage was like most of our major political and social movements, such as the extension of the franchise (among men), abolition of slavery, Civil Rights, and women's liberation: noble in spirit, perhaps, but imperfect, incomplete, and ultimately unfinished. There is more work to do. There is always more work to do.
Almost a hundred years after (white) women won the right to vote, and more than fifty years after African Americans finally won theirs, hundreds of thousands - maybe millions - of people are still losing theirs. The forces of reaction are always stronger than we realize. There is much more work to do.
34
@phil239
African Americans won the right to vote before women did. That the South effectively disenfranchised them is undeniable, but that the right to vote was enshrined in law is equally so.
I did not know about this aspect of history but am not surprised by it. The human animal is constantly evolving throughout time. While it is right to highlight the truth about such injustices and cruelties, it is not right either to vilify women who changed the world but who were also subject to the ignorances of the time. Were they alive today, my guess is that they would be enlightened and see things very differently.
The tendency these days to "clobber" white people and imply simplistically that most people of a different ethnicity, gender, religion, political persuasion are inherently good and virtuous-- is something we need to fight against.
We are all "evolving." No one group has a corner on righteousness no matter how galvanized they are by the politics of the day.
I am a conservative who regularly feels terrible watching movies of the past where maid /servants are portrayed as black and deferential---and happy to be so (this one a benign example )
These things sting my conscience as an American and a human being in ways I would not have felt many years ago. We are all "coming along..."
39
@Marcia Stephens, well-said! Little is accomplished by disenfranchised groups pointing fingers at one another. As I used to teach my students, if one was not a rich white male in the United States, one had few if any rights or standing in the community. And now that some have been procured, do not forget that the powerful would love to rescind them. Never forget and never stand down.
3
@Marcia Stephens
Today's angry feminists would do well to heed what you've written as well, with respect to men. Their self-righteousness can be jaw-dropping.
1
To further contextualize the critiques this article is based on, read Laura Free's, "Suffrage Reconstructed: Gender, Race and Voting Rights in the Civil War Era". Free's reading supports most of the arguments advanced here. But it also highlights Stanton et al.'s deeply felt sense betrayal on the part of "their ostensible allies -Republicans and abolitionists - for [their] deliberate rejection of women's rights": The 14th amendment for the first time ever explicitly added gender based language in narrowing for some, while expanding for others, the constitutionally based definition of "we the people". To me the most important lessons about these undeniably flawed heroes of suffrage are only partly about their own racism. This reading reminds us that many of the heroes of the major struggles during this period, far from least Lincoln himself, might be considered "sell outs" or much worse in various ways. To me, the most important lessons raised by this history are about how powerful interests prevent the subjugated from uniting. Instead, they are all too often successful at redirecting the fight for liberation into a competition for favors. The most distressing version of this, on display here, is open warfare among the oppressed, and a lack of ability to work together to tear down the broader scaffolding that supports the subjugation of each. This "toxic legacy" stains the toxicity of the present, so let's use history to transcend rather than reproduce the past!
30
Many years ago Alice Walker wrote a book entitled, IN SEARCH OF OUR MOTHER'S GARDEN, where she drew clear lines of distinction between what black women viewed as equality issues and white women. I would suggest this as a read for today. The main group of women who have argued her points are Black women theologians. Alice Walker's principal argument is the different agendas of each group. An argument inferred or suggested in this article. Black women have always seen their struggles for equality in the context of the entire black community - they understood black men and children were oppressed also and equality was not just for a portion of the community. White women, on the other hand, only saw their struggle against white men, who held power.
This, of course, is not to diminish the racism white women held as member of a racialized society, or ask them to do better.
I think, in forward movement, (after truth telling), all of us need to re-examine the harm of white male hegemonic powers and decide whether we really want a society based on the prototype they've promulgated.
19
It is always an interesting historical moment when social movements reach a degree of intensity where they begin to denounce and eat their own. From that point on, they have usually run their course.
The Reign Of Terror in the French Revolution of the late 18th century began to collapse at the point where it executed its most prominent leader, Robespierre.
Activists today who promote conflict between Black Rights and Women's Rights to the extent that they feel the need to question the motivations for the 19th Amendment are working toward the result of negating them both.
74
Yes, we need to know our history, but can we also please acknowledge that our political sensibilities then were not the same as they are now? Racism, as we deal with it everyday in all its various definitions and levels, is a post-modern concept. History can be rewritten by redactors, revisionists and also by well-meaning anachronism-creators.
The political conditions for Suffrage one hundred years ago was dire. It’s always been a tough slog to get the U.S. to extend, protect and defend civil rights — contrary to its grandiose self-image. It has always been a struggle for each and every interest group.
Feminism had waned into a lost idea until the Civil Rights revolution of the ‘60s. Then suddenly women of all colors woke up. Now they’re waking up again. Feminism in the U.S. comes in increasingly focused waves — just like racial equality. Black Lives Matter and #MeToo are now doing well all on their own.
30
This is a fine essay, one that strikes a cautionary note. Recall: the suffragettes also aligned themselves with the Prohibition Movement, a largely anti-Catholic punitive measure (especially aimed at recent German and Irish immigrants). I hope this time around,that mindful that we all have blind spots, the scions of that great movement, will give up the notion of "litmus tests," for women (and men) who dissent on this issue or that.
15
@brian
Women's support for Prohibition was a way of trying to control abusive husbands who drank the household money and regularly beat their wives and children.
Women could legislate the drink, but not the men. It seemed easier to fight against the drink.
Although your editorial rightly documents the racism within the women's suffrage movement, for some reason it chooses to wrongly suggest that the civil rights movement of the mid-20th Century wasn't rife with sexism. It has been well-documented that it was. Both movements, wrongly, often asked black women to take a back seat and to choose between race and gender. I think it is important to note this not simply to correct you, but because we are currently experiencing a historic moment in which African-American women's leadership is finally being recognized and celebrated. (As well as the leadership of women of color from many backgrounds.). Women of color now lead major civil rights and women's rights organizations, they are at the forefront of the flood of women running for office this election-cycle, they started and are leading the #MeToo movement, and are at the center of a wave of political change that is happening across our nation. It has taken nearly 250 years of this nation's history for this long-needed recognition of the political contributions of women of color to happen. It needs to be recognized.
124
It is good to know that there would have been no vote for women if it weren't for Frederick Douglass. We women should definitely get over ourselves!
I thank you for the rest of this information. Any racism in feminism is to be condemned. Black women are among the wisest and bravest feminist leaders.
Black women speak for themselves.
But I can speak to my experience of virtual black male misogyny on the internet when I have anonymously defended black women's complaints. Black men, assuming I was a black woman, became united in insulting me with misogynistic stereotypes of black women. And I was told that women's complaints were as nothing compared to theirs; I was ungrateful for their work in combating racism and should get behind them. Maybe in the back of the bus? It was a real eye opener.
Black women are speaking up about black male misogyny and they are still being told that they should ignore it because racism is a greater evil. Just because misogynists don't lynch people or throw women into prison for being female doesn't mean that the systematized terror and discrimination isn't as great a threat to health and freedom to even more people than racism is. Bigotry is wrong.
Should feminists use the example of this column to cite the misogyny of black males for black women to denigrate the history of the Civil rights movement? I don't think so. Racism is real; misogyny is real White male privilege should unite all who suffer under it; this column seeks to divide us
56
Both white women and black women waited 50 years for the right to vote after the 15th amendment gave the same right to black men. Some would say all women were betrayed.
122
@KLM My thought exactly. I don't know why we're supposed to trust Frederick Douglass on the subject of what black women wanted or needed back then. J/K, I do know why.
2
Sojourner Truth "crashed' the Akron, Ohio suffrage Convention where she was not scheduled nor welcome. There in spite of, she gave her infamous speech "Ain't I a Woman"
"Truth did a bunch of things in her speech—"...she's speaking out against the treatment of all women, she's speaking out against the treatment of all slaves and former slaves, and she's speaking out against the marginalization of Black women even within the feminist movement..."
In 1851, Truth when stood up at the Ohio Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio and gave a completely spontaneous speech .. that was her was her response to the suffrage movement exclusion and betrayal of black women
22
"Reasonable people could, of course, disagree on the merits of who should first be given the vote — women or black men."
Really? It's reasonable to pick one sex or race to grant voting rights and exclude the other? Because it seems to me that one choice is sexist and the other is racist, and neither is reasonable.
The only reasonable position is equal rights. You know, an essential part of liberalism. How has the left so thoroughly forgotten what liberalism is?
71
thank you for a much needed expose re suffrage movt. that too few people are aware of. while we certainly should mark the centennial of the 19 amendment, we need to be clear-eyed about the actual back story leading up to it.
9
Some things never change
For all the talk of the women’s movement it is important to remember 53% of white women looked past Trump’s racism, misogyny and xenophobia to vote for him - over what could have been the first female president!
And in Alabama, Moore - an admitted pedophile - also received the majority of the white female vote.
Real change is coming from women.
Women who belong to minorities.
34
@Blue
Those female Trump voters have that right, contrary to how the fringe left thinks everyone ought fall into lockstep. Perhaps the white working class would still be solidly Democrat had the party, beginning in the late 1960s, not abandoned more than half of the nation that wasn't rich and white or poor and black, then latino. Want to know how the GOP has kept the presidency and Congress and now SCOTUS? It's because the Democrats don't give a fig for middle class and poor whites, other than Bill Clinton who made that segment of America once again feel included and listened to for the first time in 20 years, and then that disappeared from 2000-2016...till Trump.
5
Xenophobia and cultural distain for immigrants--including Catholics and Jews--informed some leading suffragists arguments as well.
19
Where’s the part that the suffrage movement grew out of the abolitionist movement. White women were working to free slaves. Then they realized black men would be legally able to vote while they couldn’t. A good book is The Feminist Papers
49
@Dee Erker That wouldn't fit with Staples' narrative.
1
Was Susan B. Anthony really at Seneca Falls convention? The history is that she and Stanton hooked up several years later. Also, Frederick Douglass was indeed an ardent supporter of women's suffrage, but still thought it secondary to obtaining rights for blacks. It's good to know the history of progressive movements, but let he/she without sin cast the first stone.
35
We need to know the history, but we also need to know what both black women and white women did then and subsequently to advance both women's suffrage and the rights of black people. As a liberal, I have been an advocate for everyone's rights all my life, and I am not alone. That's how we can learn to live and advocate together for the rights of all, including the current folks who are immigrants, and those in our country fighting for their rights who are not immigrants.
10
Lest we forget, any amendment to the U.S. Constitution must be passed by two-third majorities of both the House and Senate and then ratified by three-fourths of the States.
By the early-20th Century, Congress repeatedly bent to the will of white supremacists, to the extent that even anti-lynching bills could not be passed. The Southern state legislatures were also solidly under white supremacist control. The sad fact of the matter is that if the Suffragettes had vigorously campaigned for voting rights for black, as well as white, women, it is likely that the 19th Amendment would not have been ratified at all in 1920.
15
I have no doubt that many suffragists were racist or that many abolitionists were sexist. That does not mean that we should not celebrate the dual achievements of both movements. Let us not compare grievances and attack each other. Your freedom is my freedom just as mine should be yours. If we insist on a hierarchy of suffering and inisist that we celebrate only those who have suffered the most we will tear each other apart.
Let us celebrate with our eyes open to the faliability of those who came before and of ourselves as well.
87
Not a lot has changed. The women’s equality movement continues to focus on mostly white women denied senior executive positions and paid less than white men. Certainly not on the fact that women of color are paid less than white women or that at the bottom of the pay scale, it’s mostly women of color. White women take care of their own. Not coincidental that 53%of white women voted for Donald Trump.
12
Mr. Staples is right that feminist icons of this period failed black women woefully. Inclusion and equality seems to be a very slow process, especially in a country with such deeply ingrained sexism and racism. (that's right, America, I'm talking about you). That said, I think suffrage was indeed a very important movement, necessary, even with the glaring flaws in those that led it. I think we must see history as it is, imperfect, messy, ugly, and gloriously inspiring too. We can learn from both the accomplishments and failures of past leaders without destroying them, I believe. Humans are complicated and rarely (if ever) completely good. Time can remedy some of this in a person, but most of us just will not live long enough to become as good as we should be. So lets teach and learn what Anthony and Stanton did right, as well as what they did wrong. Lets celebrate and learn too, about these other women of color that fought. I can't think of a better lesson for the modern Women's Movement as we move towards something more intersectional in nature.
13
Do you want to see the racism, classism, and religious intolerance in suffrage? Look no further than the origins of the Girl Scouts, and the most recents in the lean-in groups and other whitewashed abortion activist, greed fest for the wealthy. I am on board in support of choice and free will, but not at the expense of the truth. If the memorial to suffrage has its core in a Reganesque media tribute, as in a display of the heavens opening, theology babbles, and bolts of lightning to accompany the/his ascension, you can count me out.
6
@Dan Holton
ROFL.
A mile wide s-t-r-e-t-c-h, Dan.
Prejudice is universal. In 2008, over 70% of African American voters said yes to California’s Prop 8 which banned gay marriage. Not 100 or 150 years ago. At that time Barack Obama was against gay marriage, this was clearly politically expedient... I don’t find articles by gay people pillorying him after the fact for this because he was a good person who did more good than harm. And he changed his position later. My point, about President Obama is that sometimes good people take not 100% pure positions based on political realities at a given time. Probably not much unlike those women back in the 1800s.
96
I blush to think that I apparently know as little about Anthony as Trump knew about Frederick Douglass. We have this tendency on both sides of the political spectrum to want to sanitize and mythologize figures from history. What happens is that we end up cynical, wanting to be able to categorize people as saints or sinners rather than as flawed humans who could be right about some things and wrong about others. When heroes are shown to be human and not mythical beings, we use that as an excuse to believe there is no such thing as the right. There is.
55
In any discussion of racism, monuments to racism, and racism in elections, a discussion of the Electoral College deserves a prominent place as a greater monument to racism than any statue. See: http://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/. The Electoral College is also a monument to gerrymandering and voter suppression and it is the reason for where we are today politically--it annulled the votes of millions in favor of the votes of a small minority and elected Trump and the Republicans to appear to represent this country with the spreading of racial and worldwide social discord. Elimination of the EC's power over us would be a new form of suffrage, can be done by state legislatures, and would advance racial justice, inspire voter turnout, and give us a sense that fairness counts in this democracy. See https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/
79
Excellent comment! Few know the real reason why the EC exists. They think it was to ensure that city power did not overwhelm rural power. That reason is only partly true. This misunderstanding glaringly demonstrates how civics-illiterate Americans are. The EC should have been abolished after the Civil War. And it probably would have been had Lincoln not been assassinated and the Southern bigot VP Johnson taken his place.
1
@freyda It is doubtful that President Trump would have lost in a direct election. Because we employ the Electoral College format, the campaigns were designed to collect as many of those votes as possible. Had we, instead, been under a direct voting system, the campaigns would have focused on individual vote getting. I believe that would have made a significant difference in the final tally.
Such an important article of a topic which needs so much more attention.I would also like to make the point that there were women involved in both the abolitionist and suffrage movements such as Frances Dana Barker Gage. Frances separated herself from Stanton and Anthony when they did not support the 15th amendment. (http://www.civilwarmed.org/surgeons-call/gage/). She was also the presider over the 1851 women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio where she introduced Sojourner Truth. It is unfortunate that Frances Dana Barker Gage and her support of universal rights was not mentioned in this article nor her belief that abolition, first, women's right, second...I commend the author for discussing Ida B Wells as her story is not well publicized nor so many other women who worked for universal rights.
99
@Traci For an alternative critique, see the article, The Great Schism, by Ta-Nehsi Coates at http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/10/the-great-schism/246....
We continue to betray ourselves by continuing to ignore large swaths of our history and by separating parts of our history. from what we teach our children. The progressive label is only that. We all receive the more or less the same curriculum during our K-12 education. It is left pretty much up to chance for college students to take a class or two to supplement their knowledge of Black history.
No child should leave high school without having studied Ida B. Wells or Frederick Douglass and written deep essays about their writings. No child should finish high school without having learned to critically read a slave narrative and write about it. No child should graduate without having read James Baldwin. But they do leave school without knowing some of the most important, most formative things about who we are as a people.
The suffrage movement did betray Black women. It continues to through the divide and conquer politics that America cannot escape, cycle in, cycle out. The last election cycle was full of racial text, subtext, and on both sides.
If we want that betrayal to end, finally, we must take meaningful steps to make it possible. Everything starts with what we teach our children as they begin to form a mindset that will guide and inform them for life.
---
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Bernie Sanders, MLK, Socialism & Reparations (2016)
https://www.rimaregas.com/2016/01/21/ta-nehisi-coates-bernie-sanders-mar...
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Thank you, Mr. Staples, for an enlightening article. I must confess, however, that it did not surprise me. It seems that every special interest group is interested in "me first" and has difficulty seeing a broad picture. As an animal and environmental advocate, it pains me to see otherwise worthy organizations clueless or apathetic to the suffering of nonhuman animals and to the destruction of the planet. Until people are able to make connections, I fear that little progress will be made in any area.
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SCA from Lebanon NH-
Exactly - sort of. It isn’t global but it can be local
You may want to read the Times article about New Hampshire in the Times about how the state is 94% white. And how it’s causing issues for the future of the state
Sanders and Warren are looked at the skepticism by minorities (and rightfully so). So geography matters.
1
"I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."
"The domestic function of the woman does not exhaust her powers... To make one half of the human race consume its energies in the functions of housekeeper, wife and mother is a monstrous waste of the most precious material God ever made"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Parker
Theodore Parker (1810 – 1860)
Speaking as a white male myself, it's no secret that America's white males and their built-in white male privilege still have a long way to go in ensuring that non-white-non-male citizens get a fair shake.
Too many white male snowflakes act like they're a persecuted bunch....in fact, they recently elected a White-Male-Snowflake-In-Chief who is currently trashing the country in the name of Making Christian White Male Snowflakes Great Again.
"the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”
Register and vote in record numbers on November 6 2018, America.....for justice....and against white-spite snowflakes who can't stand modernity, democracy or the color of 'other' people's skin.
White male privilege makes America sick; let's get rid of it.
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@Socrates
“Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves.”
~ James Baldwin
We need to make fundamental changes. Here is one example of why, by way of Arthur Brooks.
https://www.rimaregas.com/2017/08/02/arthur-brooks-on-nprs-tedtalks-radi...
11
@Socrates I regret to inform you that there is no "arc of the moral universe." Alas, as the past two years have revealed, history is not necessarily a tale of progress toward equality, freedom, or justice.
14
@Chris Rasmussen
Well it certainly made for powerful rhetoric when King reprised it. I had no idea of the term's origins prior to MLK.
But if there were to be a moral universe or an arc that describes it, it's no doubt an artifact of human rational conscientiousness.
Now that we know that Justice is a universal human right & racial bigotism is demonstrably & scientifically disproved, & the that ideas that the various patriarchal societies & their absurd power-structures had about about women utterly wrong...
It's high time we bent that arc a whole lot faster & more decisively:
Liberty & Justice for ALL human & non-human persons alike, Now & Forever.
Abusive anti-egalitarian power structures must be unanimously rejected by all citizens everywhere.
Egalitarianism is the 'pot of gold' at the end of the rainbow, justice is the formula that defines that arc.
Thank you for this informative, sad, and sadly familiar understanding. It is disheartening. I'm reminded of reading Invisible Man and wondering how Ellison could be SO aware of identity, and then so blind about the humanity of the women characters. This moment in history, more than any previous it seems, is teaching us that we don't have to compromise what is right to be satisfied with a scrap in the slow progression towards a seat at the table. History is not looking kindly towards those who weren't brave enough to demand it all, for all of us. It is a bitter sweet relief that we finally appear ready to accept a nuanced understanding of how we got where we are. On a side note, Mr. Staples, you do mistakenly note that women, black and white, were fighting for the vote to compare with, support, or otherwise subserviate themselves to their male counterparts. Women have and continue to participate in our own visions of society because it is our right and our responsibility to do so.
38
Looking forward to the editorial on the ways the Civil Rights Movement, and other black rights movements, betrayed women as well....
270
@LLS An interesting thought, and one that leads to seeing the advantages of the current intersectional approach. Whenever any group seeks their freedom, it can (perhaps must) so engross their energy they become blind to the struggles of those beside them. I remember how shocked I was, back in the early 70s, to read in Eldridge Cleaver's autobiography that he struck back at white men by raping white women -- and that he "practiced" on black women in the ghetto first. The struggle was clearly framed in his mind as "men against men." He didn't see the pain of the female humans beside him. I'm grateful that we all seem to be listening a little harder these days, and if it means revisiting our heroes, so be it. We can still pay them honor without insisting they were perfect. The loss of that fairy tale is worth it if it opens our eyes to the suffering we glossed over.
8
There have been articles describing the sexism of the black-male-dominated civil rights movement, as well as the internalized racism of black men that often found them with very fair-skinned black women or white women partners.
Of course there can always be more.
1
@LLS. Agreed, except that someday progressives will recognize that a house divided cannot stand, and slicing up the electorate into race, gender, religion, sexual preference grievances slices us all.
1
Agreed, but let's not overlook the fact that the equality movement also overlooked fighting for the rights of gay and lesbian and others at the time, too.
I find the discussion of interest, but feel it is motivated by the view of the world through the author's eyes at this time rather than the big picture.
Equality should have been for all, from the beginning. It was not, and unfortunately even in some areas of the country and in every state, it still isn't viewed with the hallowed respect it should have as a cornerstone of being a free country, with a basic right of equality and respect for all.
We have a long ways to go. Would it have been nice to have all people, all genders or identities be equal both in the eyes of the law and of it's citizens? Yes. Has it happened in over 200 years? No, and the unfortunate part is that those who are bigoted remain so, mostly, but now feel empowered to exercise their bigotry openly.
I hope by the next time this is written about in 50 years, it will be resolved, for the better.
40
All gay men had the vote already. Not that they ever referred to themselves as gay, since that word wasn't repurposed until sometime in the Mid-20th.
There were gay slave owners, we can be quite sure. They didn't have marriage rights, but technically, neither did the slaves.
Lesbians were no more disenfranchised than their cisgender sisters.
The fight for LGBT equality continues, but for it to even begin, they had to step forward and identify themselves as LBGT. Many preferred to enjoy the privileges granted them by birth (if any), by keeping their proclivities a private matter.
You had to be somebody like Oscar Wilde (an Irish rebel to the core) to get enough attention to be persecuted for it, at least if you were a person of the right class. People would turn a blind eye.
This article is about the struggle for the vote, and NOBODY in the 19th century was ever denied the franchise for being gay.
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@Christopher Lyons
But for being black and gay they most certainly were denied the franchise in southern states.
@Christopher Lyons
Gay people were not denied the right to vote, but their identity often denied them the right to hold a job, live where they wished, and to be imprisoned at the whim of local authorities. The documentation on this is voluminous.
Your cavalier attempt to white-wash the persecution society enacted upon gay people does not wash at all.
It’s a sad fact that the suffrage movement in America was tainted by racism against blacks, as was life itself throughout the United States before and after ratification of the 13th through 15th Amendments. It’s perhaps saddest that a lot of this had as much to do with a fear of getting nothing from an already-resistant citizenry as it did with racism: ALL women were seeking to eat from the same plate and, is so often the case, some would just as well see fewer competitors at it with forks, in the hope that others might receive more.
Mr. Staples makes valid points about historical reality, but I’m not so sure that his prescriptives are either fair or reasonable. Rather than fewer monuments celebrating the suffrage movement, and less enthusiasm in celebrating the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment in two years, we should have MORE of both, and it should be more inclusionary of black women who fought for the vote.
While it’s valid and necessary to seek to understand history as it was, with all its warts, we do too much to vilify our real accomplishments as a people because they were tainted by one thing or another (usually racist in nature): NO great transformation of society to a higher state is accomplished pure and unadulterated. But occasionally one happens. When it does, we should celebrate that great accomplishment while taking great efforts to recognize EVERYONE’S participation.
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@Richard Luettgen I'm not sure any movement of that era wasn't tainted by racism--even the abolitionists could be accused of that.
Stanton was hardly the whole suffrage movement. Many other suffrage activists listened in awe to Sojourner Truth's famous speech about how she had done everything a man could do--"And ain't I a woman?"
If we wish to be judged by the best in us, and not the worst, we should extend the same courtesy to others. Stanton's greatest failing was that she could not do this with regards to black men, because she was afraid of them.
There's still a lot of that going around. So we should be less concerned with judging those who came before us than with ourselves. We could all be better. But as Dr. King said, we may not be where we want to be, but thank God we aren't where we used to be.
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Well, geez, so what else is new about "progressive" hypocrisy?
As a native and now gratefully ex-Noo Yawkuh, I spent most of my employed life working for non-profit organizations--including an international women's organization--and can attest and affirm that progressive values are mostly for public consumption but are mostly absent on home turf.
Sisterhood is not global; it is not even local; it's just a slogan like so many others.
22
@SCA You mean progressives, too, are human beings? Imagine! I'll still take the cause that makes the right argument even if the people making it aren't perfect over the ones who make the wrong arguments in favor of restricting the rights of others.
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@SCA
I suppose that "conservative" values are devoid of "conservative" hypocrisy as well and have been manufactured "mostly for public consumption."
Or wouldn't that be a hyperbolic simplified generalization?
Perhaps if you intend to issue an indictment of "progressive" perspectives, you might want to be specific and provide evidence to support your claim.
At least a good number of "progressives" are willing to examine past history and are willing to identify and even write about mistakes made by actors from the past -- even those actors who hitherto have been enveloped within a hagiographical image.
I have not found many (if any) "conservatives" who are willing to attempt to achieve a deeper and more mature understanding of the past -- even if that means identifying blemishes upon their own legendary "conservative" heroic actors.
In other words, it is a strength, not a weakness, to be self-critical. Those who refuse to engage in self-criticism seem to be insecure in their own beliefs, tend to view the world with bipolar lenses, refuse to acknowledge that the world is not all black and white, that there are always shades of grey in between as well as a wide spectrum of colors (some of which are invisible to the naked eye and incurious mind).
That being said, a more mature understanding of history is capable of perceiving the myth and legend, but also acknowledges that history has mostly been written by those with superior military and economic power.
34
Sorry you had a bad experience at your not-for-profit in New York, but that hardly qualifies you to judge the whole progressive movement in New York and across the country as empty lip-service. When you recover from the depression, cynicism and exhaustion that so often results from working in a toxic environment, I hope you can find better groups to align your values and talents with, and that you can recover some energy and hope for the future.
12
Thanks for this article about the history of this movement, especially since I wasn't aware of it. But after reading it, I was left with a greater sense of divisiveness and hopelessness. I began to speculate how we might start to heal this divide. Could this centennial of the 19th Amendment be an opportunity to call for, to work for, to fight for the voting rights of all women in the United States?
40
@Jan, Yes let's focus on moving forward!
1
So celebrate, but just not that much?
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@Norville T. Johnson
Whoosh!
@Norville T. Johnson
Celebrate the truth!
Mr Staples is right to brand 19th century whites, men or women, as largely racist in their views of enslaved Africans living in America. Most of them certainly were racist.
We have spent some time discussing the racism of the founding fathers, the inconsistency of their views on the inherent dignity of all men in the face of slavery.
Many of them knew they were racists. They viewed the slaves as captives from stone age villages and to be used as chattel. They did not view the slaves or the freed slaves as their equals in any sense of the word.
That message must be integral to the way we teach, learn and apply our history. Like the Germans who were silent during the Holocaust, they were complicit.
Those are truisms.
The inconvenient aspect of those truisms is that the equality or even the humanity of the slaves was not uppermost in the minds of either the founding fathers or the founding feminists. They were concerned with matters more important to own their lives and the fate of slaves, and even the emancipated slaves did not make their list of priorities.
Their racism and their hypocrisy to the status of slaves or freemen does not diminish their accomplishments. Their accomplishments were real and have had lasting impact, for the better, for generations of people since their time, including the descendants of those slaves.
The major lesson is that the founders were imperfect humans, capable of both greatness and smallness.
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This is an odd article.
Describing Cady Stanton as a “classic liberal racist” is quite off-putting. It smacks of articles calling Lincoln a racist as he was initially for repatriation of Blacks to Africa.
America has never been “free” in the aspirations of its founding documents. The human beings from our past and present will always be imperfect against the ideals of our founding.
218
"White women were seeking the vote as a symbol of parity with their husbands and brothers. Black women, most of whom lived in the South, were seeking the ballot for themselves and their men, as a means of empowering black communities besieged by the reign of racial terror that erupted after Emancipation."
It's just like the modern feminist movement! Change is gonna come...
4
I'd like to bring your attention to Esther Morris, who as a young woman in Owego, New York insisted that Frederick Douglas be permitted to speak in her Baptist Church. When a mob threatened to burn the church if Douglas entered, Esther stood up on a chair and said, "You can burn the church around me, I will not leave." My book, A Woman's Work: The Storied Life of Esther Morris, who was a feminist and pioneer in many ways, was published last year. In May, the NYT ran a belated obituary for Esther on the front page.
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@Marian B. Thank you for your recommendation. I will try to find your book! I am collecting information about both blacks and whites who have fought racism as well as interesting historical stories. Do you know about "Never Caught" the story of Ona Judge, one of the Washington (George and Martha) slaves who escaped and was never recaptured, despite efforts by George?
4
@Marian B.
*Douglass*
5
The NYT obituary of Ms. Morris is at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/obituaries/overlooked-esther-morris.html
it is hard to confront the behaviors of white liberal racist women willing to fight for themselves and their men at the expense of Black women and men. No one wants to admit their embrace of white supremacy and the extent to which they will go to protect their assumed privilege and position. The Women's Movement did not change the dialectic or the tactics. The 2016 election provides the latest data showing little has changed. 52% of white women voted for Donald Trump, despite his misogyny. Among Black women, 98% did not vote for Trump; the misogyny wielded against their gender will never supercede the animus imposed against their assigned race.
56
It’s very odd, as a white feminist, to be chastised by a black man on suffrage, when black men were granted it sixty years before women were. Female suffragists believed that they would be granted the vote at the same time, but Lincoln believed it to be a bridge too far. I am sorry that Frederick Douglass’s feelings were hurt by white suffragettes. Perhaps getting suffrage when they did not eased the sting a bit.
Nor do I recall a major movement of black men calling for all women to receive their suffrage. That work was done by women.
I acknowledge the facts as laid out here, these white suffragettes were both heroes and beholden to the prejudices of their time, just as all heroes are. MLK Jr. did not have enlightened attitudes towards women. We as progressives are pushed into tighter and tighter circles of intersectionality and self-reproach while the world burns.
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@Mercury S
Superb comment.
I am so sick of the holier-than-thou- -am-more-abused attitude of many under-represented groups. There is NO group that has been more abused through history than women -unless possibly it is children.
Enough with the trashing of those who belong to groups that STILL suffer from discrimination as women do from men - regardless of race.
11
@Mercury S, one of progressivism 's weak points is the ceaseless re-examination of history and appling modern attitudes to long dead individuals, then pillorying those who were not 100% pure in their motivation and actions.
Meanwhile Trump appoints modern day racists and misogynists to the cabi et and the federal judiciary. Pardon me if I choose to be more concerned about the consequences of those appointments then the misdeeds of 19th century activists.
5
@Mercury S Very well said and a good argument. As one who studied this part of history at length, I ask, well, what would you have had the Suffragists do? Stand by and not demand the vote?
8
White Feminists today are using the same playbook as their racist sisters from the past. Only this time they seek to portray all men and boys as rapists, to presume all men and boys guilty upon accusation, to conflate a guy who asks a woman for a date with a rapist, and to establish rules where men cannot speak to women unless the man is spoken to first, and then apply those rules first to men and boys of color.
White Feminists who run most public schools have been leaders in creating the school to prison pipeline.
The 2011 Dear Colleague letter under Title IX has been used to permanently deny innocent men of color college educations. Just read the horrific stories identified by the Harvard Law School faculty, including one that happened at HLS itself!
Hillary Clinton claimed men and boys of color were predators and should be locked up and the key thrown away. Which produced a Federal law that did just that.
To Kill a Mockingbird could not be published today.
White women are using feminism to create Female White Supremacy.
4
How can anyone be surprised that racism has permeated liberal movements in the past, when the famously liberal president, Woodrow Wilson, was also a thoroughgoing racist, who drove black people out of the civil service by the droves. The famous liberal public works kingpin Robert Moses went to great lengths to see that black people could not bath on his Long Island beaches. Those are just two more examples of liberal politics mixing with outright racism. The, segregated, post WWII government support of home ownership and college education are two more.
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@Michael RACISM permeates the conservative movement today...
4
Robert Moses was not a liberal.
6
You make a profound point – sad irony, this was sideshow vs what that erudite Democrat/governor/ivy-president Woodrow Wilson wreaked upon the black community (also yours)…
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/opinion/when-white-supremacists-ruled...
“…The white supremacist agenda pushed by the U.D.C. was ascendant in Washington when…Woodrow Wilson became president…Wilson promptly filled his administration with segregationists who worked diligently to segregate as much of the work force as they could. Highly paid black workers were driven out or confined to lower-paying jobs…Many black workers were barred from offices, bathrooms and lunch tables that they once had shared with white co-workers…
“…The officially sanctioned segregation that took root during the Wilson era deepened under President…Harding, whose Southern-born commissioner of public buildings…segregated even the tennis courts near the Washington Monument. The dedication of the Lincoln Memorial…was staged as a Jim Crow event, with black dignitaries banished to a weed-strewn Negro-only seating section…
I’ve always recoiled at the phrase “white privilege”, but no doubt deep-seated structural racism exists in the US till this day…More irony – it’s in K-12 Social Studies we’re taught to equate Wilson with the League of Nations more than the KKK…
Call it “structural white privilege” – which, short of not being shot during a traffic stop, hasn’t been experienced by most whites – you might get more support…
40
White Suffragettes protesting gender inequality customs, as well as laws before the 19th Amendment, were appealing to other white women for support,who shared general white racist views. The Suffragette/Prohibitionist slogan was they deserved the vote for they were “Free, White and Twenty-One,” and it spoke to the Suffragette argument for the ballot, that by adding the vote of white women in elections, white women voters would prevent blacks from dominating whites, - presumably the way that whites dominated and mistreated blacks.
Racism still infects the liberal white women’s rights movement today, @Metoo, given its aims to empower women even at the destruction of traditional two-parent families. And the same contradiction arises in its push for an absolute right for women to terminate a pregnancy, for any reason, using state funded services, at the loss of minority children.
White suffragettes however were no different than white immigrants looking to get ahead of blacks. White churches were the worst moral hypocrites of the time, preaching salvation but practicing it only for whites. Hence all the major white denominations segregated their church pews where they admitted blacks; all Catholic missionary groups, Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, Sisters of the Holy Family, Society of Saint Joseph, appealed for white donations to help “Negroes and Indians” while using donations to enrich the church and assist their white kinfolk.
24
"Amendment XIX. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
This article does not bother to state the 19th amendment, so here it is, as written by Stanton and Anthony.
Please, everyone, stop quibbling long enough to register. Vote in 2018 and 2020, and say thank you to these two even though they were white women.
Our big national problem today is the low voter participation rate.
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@Carol
So you didn't want to know that black female suffragists were sort of left behind? How does not knowing that help?
How does willful ignorance of history help anyone?
I'm talking to you, the vast majority of the commenters to this article.
6
@Carol yes. 99 days until midterms.
I am an Afro American feminist, and I find the editor's zero-sum argument fulfilling the intentions of the powers that be: divide and conquer. I support the essay insofar as it prevents the deification of 19th century suffragists. But let's also ponder who decided, in the nineteenth century, that the franchise was to be extended to either Afro American men or so-called white women? Most of the founding fathers were slaveholders. Having dealt with the precarious and vicarious shoals of professional life with women of European heritage, it is undoubtedly true that some are infected with racism. So the famous suffragists employed the losing argument of white supremacy to advance their cause. They lost, and were finally granted suffrage at a time when Afro Americans in the South were killed or lost their jobs--such as they were--by trying to register to vote. No commemorations can undo or erase the shameful history of this young country, and it's shameful and horrible present.
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@Blessinggirl, right. I want to ask you and Dr. Staples, where to next? And who will lead? I suggest white feminists should be stepping aside, or at least do a better job of sharing the leadership role. I can't see anyone else stepping up to the plate.
2
This article is misleading and full of the double standards typically applied to women. Black men of the 1800s were just as sexist as white women where racist--and black men still were 100 years later. Civil rights leader Ella Baker helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, yet MLK's implicit sexism caused him to deliberately insist that she not lead those organizations because she was female. But we don't read articles about the inherent misogyny in the Civil Rights movement attacking MLKs legacy. As usual, we remember women for their faults and discount their heroics and we remember men for their heroics and discount their faults. Stanton and Anthony worked tirelessly for decades as abolitionists and Anthony and Douglass remained respected friends throughout their lives. Stanton's "Sambo" comment was made in the heat of the moment after Douglass betrayed women of all colors by accepting the 15th Amendment for black men and not for any women--women of color included. But, if you try to have a nuanced discussion on this topic, you are immediately labeled a "racist white feminist." If you are interested in a balanced look at the pressures on both sides of this debate read the excellent book "Fighting Chance: The Struggle over Woman Suffrage and Black Suffrage in Reconstruction America" by Faye E. Dudden.
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@Amy Luna Exactly!
I also recommend reading "Splintered Sisterhood." A well researched book on how women used the power given to them by men, to maintain their social class and deny women the vote.
5
@Amy Luna
]"But, if you try to have a nuanced discussion on this topic, you are immediately labeled a 'racist white feminist.'"
Not by everyone, Amy, and not by a long-shot. A hyper-ventilating, over-empowered group of radical malcontents are doing what malcontents often do--seek justice by stifling all dissent and labelling it in disparaging terms. Too bad they don't seek justice in freedom to speak one's piece and be heard--lest they be seen themselves, as they truly are: dirty fighters.
Don't be put off by of the labels these hyper-politicizing people lay on you. We cannot allow them to control the cultural right to speak, just because they are madder than hell--and some of them madder than the Mad Hatter-- and have lost all ability to nbe fair and civil any more.
5
The "sambo" comment I found was this:
"Think of Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung who do not know the difference between a monarchy and a republic, who never read the Declaration of Independence, or Webster's spelling book, making laws for Lydia Marie Child, Lucretia Mott or Fanny Kemble...."
I think Staples takes it in the wrong way. All she seems to do is use common (perhaps stereotypical) names for men of different nationalities. Her issue wasn't with Black men, in this context, it was with illiterate, uneducated men given the right to decide the laws which govern educated women's lives. The use of the word sambo makes one cringe, but in this context it's their status as what we'd call today "low information voters" rather than their race that she's insulting. Patrick clearly refers to Irish Catholic immigrants, and Hans to Germans.
13
The women's suffrage movement did not betray black women. No national leader asserted that black women should be left behind. There were women who treated black women as separate but equal. Even that was better than most men, black or white, did in that era.
Stanton had a low opinion of most men of any race and poor people of both genders. The movement has always spoken out about the reality that men abuse women in many ways including forcing sex on women who didn't want to have it. Stanton was flawed but she started the women's rights movement which has been as important to this nation as the pursuit of independence. Washington owned slaves but he's still regarded as the father of our country.
Of course, Stanton was angry when black men were granted suffrage and women weren't. Why shouldn't she have been? It was a slap in the face to women. She, quite rightly believed that it was a slap in the face to women. Black men had been in chains three years before legislators decided that they deserved more rights than women. It's a matter of power. Black men with more rights, more power, were just as likely as white men to abuse women. The women's rights movement has always spoken out about the sexual abuse of women, even wives, when they were forced to have sex when they didn't want to.
Sojourner Truth also opposed giving black men the vote before black women, believing as Stanton did, that it would reinforce the belief that all men were better than all women.
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@Marlowe as a Black southerner, White women have been equal opportunity supporters of racism. Black men and women endured terror and disenfranchisement until the Voting Rights Act - and still do to this day. Rewriting history to suit the white women as victim rather than oppressor of Black people narrative jives with the segregationist rhetoric that used terror and the legal system to subjugate Black people to protect white women. White women in Texas did not face the level of oppression and denial of rights that my father, grandfather and forefathers did. Period. And to say otherwise perpetuates rather than combats the racist tradition of this country.
7
History is about telling what actually happened. if someone was racist, sexist or homophobic then we should talk about it. When exposing the prejudice of a historical figure, it is about more than an individual human failing. Bigotry prevented deeper, stronger and more powerful coalitions between women and people of color.
54
@Tom Reynolds I agree that history should be about telling what actually happened. Historical narratives should aspire to that goal. But I don't think this opinion piece does that. This piece focuses mostly on Stanton but never mentions her abolitionist roots -- as a result the reader is presented with a very misleading portrait. Anthony's role (also an abolitionist prior to the Civil War) is barely mentioned at all -- what was her role in betraying black women? The article doesn't say. Finally, the bottom of the piece includes a "correction" from an earlier version which stated that Anthony attended the Seneca Falls women's rights convention, when in reality she did not attend. This is a big error and leads me to think this piece was not well researched in the first place.
7
You cannot judge those women by today's standards and thankfully the standards have changed a great deal. Those women are true heroines AND the tragedy of Black lives remains horrible. Today women's groups must be diverse and reach out to all women. We move ahead not by crucifying in deed or tone (as in this article) but by leading the way for change.
68
So here's my question---Can you prove that white suffragettes were more racist and more harmful than white men? If not, what's the point of this article other than to divide women? Because racism in early 20th century America is, sadly, not unique.
We never see articles about how, say FDR, the grand champion of the New Deal, might have treated black people less favorably than white people. (We know that under his watch Japanese Americans were treated very differently than German Americans so I don't need a ton of editorials to understand that he was likely a racist.)
So I would say this editorial is harmful and sexist. I am sick and tired of men trying to divide women. The race argument is a bogey here.
137
@Ines - There's no need to take this article defensively. The point is not to cast blame but to unearth an issue that needs examination -- because the patterns in feminism today that unconsciously exclude or disadvantage POC have their roots in the past. You may want to check out the concept of intersectionalism, to include voices and bring necessary perspectives to the fight. For example, in your political action circles, do you work with POC? Disabled? LGBTQ? etc. Your work is stronger when you form coalitions. Racism in the movement is something to be recognized in the past and in the present, and to be fought.
4
@Ines Well put. Though I would add I am sick and tired of any supposed "progressive" thinker, whether an op-ed writer or professional historian, who tries to divide all of us who champion progress, equality, and justice. Keep in mind, Mr. Staples quotes a number of female historians who are shocked (shocked!) that elite white ladies of the 19th Century shared (some) of the prejudices common to women of their status. And then said historians go on to destroy those figures. In a 100 years, future historians will "discover" how out of sync Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders were with the mores of the 22nd Century.
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@Ines from personal experience as a Black person raised in the South I can prove that white women were equal opportunity oppressors and beneficiaries of racism. But if course, then as now, the actual experiences of Black people mean nothing when white women cry.
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I recognize that Stanton was a racist, as were other women in the First Wave. However, Shirley Chisolm's famous quote always rings in my ears when men go down this route of sowing the seeds of racism in order to keep the patriarchy and sexism alive and well:
"I have certainly met much more discrimination in terms of being a woman than being black, in the field of politics"
I'm looking forward to an editorial about how black men have treated black women throughout our history, and I invite my black sisters to step out from under that oppression and confront it head on. There has long been an unspoken attitude by men of all races that their women must "take one for the team", whether that team is white, black, Asian, Latino, etc. The truth is, no race has treated women well. Not a single one. Women are treated like second class citizens (or worse) in every ethnic group. And any time women start to realize this and threaten to band together across ethnic lines, men start crying racism to keep women separated. Women are after all, the majority, so there is much we could do if we simply started working together.
Another quote by Chisolm comes to mind: "I am looking to no man walking this earth for approval of what I am doing."
Women of all races would be wise to follow Ms. Chisolm.
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I lost respect for Cady Stanton way back in college when I came upon a passage in which she railed against giving the vote to low-life immigrant men before it was granted to good, native-born, Protestant women. (Yes Elizabeth, this descendant of Catholic Irish immigrants knows exactly who you were talking about.)
But it's impossible to read the literature and newspaper accounts of the 19th century without realizing how pervasive was the idea that certain peoples -- often called "races" -- were better than others; indeed that there was a Linnaean taxonomy of the human race that could "scientifically" place northern Protestant white people at the top. Few people could pop their heads above the crowd to see the bigger picture. Douglas may have been one of them. Lincoln was not.
You could be an ardent abolitionist, as most of the era's white feminists were, and still buy into the wonderfully convenient notion of one's own superiority to ... somebody. My point is not to excuse Cady Stanton, but that we should stop trying to make heroes out of historical figures. Acknowledge when they have moved the conversation forward, but don't be surprised when they disappoint us. Our project to form "a more perfect union" has always been bumpy and hard. We need to keep plugging away at it.
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@Christine "[W]e should stop trying to make heroes out of historical figures." What? Excuse me, but I think I'll still put George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Winston Churchill in my list of heroes. Along with many of the suffragists who endured degrading prison conditions and force-feeding as part of the struggle for equality.
21st Century historians seem intent on tearing down--not "humanizing"--great men & women of the past. Perspective is lost. If Elizabeth Cady Stanton held common white racial prejudices of the time, that's unfortunate. But her support for abolition outweighs it--human beings were in literal chains in the Victorian era. Getting them out of those chains takes priority over whether one wanted to share a restaurant with them.
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@Christine
I liked your analysis but wonder if you will like mine, which takes off from yours and moves into currently disfavored, if not culturally censored, intellectual territory -- with the way race is often today all mixed up with different governmental systems, religions, and cultures.
Despite all its shortcomings, which we read about in abundance these days, there is a great deal to be said for the culture, religious traditions and governmental system in the USA. Being a product of it, I happen to prefer it to all others about which I know a little something.
For while raging against its capitalism, which usually goes under the alternate rubric of "greed" and "profit," its critics enjoy--and have enjoyed for some time--one of the world's highest standards of living, some of the some of the world's greatest freedoms--including the freedom to make changes to increase those freedoms--and a strong military, which can only result from sufficient national wealth to provide both guns and butter.
Protestants were dominant when this was all created here, and, yes, they were tolerant enough to allow many others to join them, since in their early days on our shores they had fled, and therefore understood, religious persecution.
And, yes, they were white. But always to equate color with culture is a mistake, because it is used a a propaganda wedge to criticize as "racist" anyone who prefers one culture over another, irrespective of the color of its inhabitants.
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She railed against giving the vote to illiterate, uneducated men. Irish immigrants, who came over during the Great Hunger were, for the most part, completely illiterate and uneducated. Penal law in Ireland forbade teaching a Catholic to read or own land. The result was that people were woefully ignorant. It would take some time to make that deficiency up. Her phrasing was poor and inflammatory, by today's standards, but I can understand why Cady Stanton thought it was an abomination to allow illiterate, uninformed, uneducated Irish, German and Black men vote, and decide women's place in society, while educated women were denied the most basic human rights.
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Brent Staples brings to light a significant and sadly-overlooked aspect of suffrage history. Missing from his article, however, is any mention of the Boston-based pro-15th Amendment American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), led by former abolitionist Lucy Stone. Stone and her allies split with Stanton and Anthony due to Stanton's and Anthony's racist opposition to the 15th Amendment. Stone and the AWSA supported the 15th Amendment and then led vital campaigns for woman suffrage during the remainder of the 19th century. Anthony's and Stanton's six volume history also largely erased the contributions of this vital wing of the suffrage movement.
Soon before Lucy Stone's death, the two wings reconciled and the resulting alliance unfortunately left any commitment to racial equality behind.
Barbara Berenson. Author of Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement: Revolutionary Reformers (2018)
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This book Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement articulately describes the debate WITHIN the movement over the 15th amendment which gave black MEN the right to vote. One wing of the movement (Lucy Stone & the American Woman Suffrage Movement) realized that the issues facing women were of totally different than those facing newly freed blacks. Staples quotes the eloquent Fredrick Douglass & many suffragists agreed with him.
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@Barbara
Sometimes you have to win your battles with what you've got, and only then move on to the next battle.
I don't know the history well, so this is just conjecture: it is possible that it would not have been possible for women seeking the vote to eliminate racism and still win at that time. That does not mean the fighters were or were not racists; it just suggests a possible--I'm guessing, probable-- political reality.
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@Barbara - while I appreciate the "not all white feminism" information, we do need to examine the roots of white feminism such that we can work on healing divides that exist even today in feminism. The first step in fixing something is realizing you have a problem.
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