We'll come back for you later...

We'll come back for you later...

1. ElizCadyStanton & Susan B Anthony’s objections to Black male suffrage were racist. But supporters of the 15thA were not anti-racist. In fact, the supporters were the more conservative, cautious, and upper-class of what became two factions (both of which were almost all white).

2. Why were 15th Amendment supporters so determined to proceed without women’s inclusion? One explanation is that while all of these folks had been abolitionists AND women’s rights advocates, they drew different conclusions from the Civil War.

3. The women’s rights movement grew in the soil of abolitionism. Its leaders were passionate abolitionists and political ideologues. When their animating passion - the eradication of slavery - came true in a cataclysm, different people saw different lessons.

4. Stanton & Anthony believed the world had been utterly rearranged, and women’s liberation--or at least political participation--was winnable too. Others wanted to keep their eye on the prize of Black freedom and power, and thought women’s empowerment would endanger that cause.

5. Does this kind of tension sound familiar? It’s not unique to suffrage. In more recent history, it played out in the LGBT movement, which argued for decades about whether to include transgender people in anti-discrimination laws.

6. Trans proponents said “later” could mean never; opponents said the mainstream wasn’t ready, and some improvement was better than none. The tensions are still present, but queers have increasingly come to see that we will all hang together in the end. #Suffrage100 #KnowYour19th 

Daily Suffragist

25/10/2019