Harriot Stanton demolishes her mother's argument for "educated suffrage"
It’s easy to disagree with your mother in private. In public, less so. Especially when your mother is Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Harriot Stanton Blatch was the 6th of ElizCadyStanton’s 7 children. She grew up to become an accomplished suffragist and feminist in her own right. 🧵 <br /><br />I’ll spend a few days on Harriot, who led some of the ideological and strategic shifts that helped the suffrage movement shake off its turn-of-the-century doldrums. Harriot Stanton went to @<a href="https://twitter.com/Vassar" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Vassar</a>, then married a wealthy British man and lived 20 years in the UK. <br /><br />In 1894 she spent some months back home in New York, helping lobby the state legislature. She found that while she had been studying class conflict in England, the radical suffragist movement of her childhood had become much more conservative. <br /><br />Still, her mother’s support for an “educated suffrage†law for male voters--literacy tests that would exclude many immigrants and working men--was a shock. Harriot said so in print. Writing in the Woman’s Journal, suffragists’ weekly paper, she begins: “My honored mother.†<br /><br />She then proceeds to demolish ElizCadyStanton’s argument: -- first pointing out that her mother knows more than a few lettered men who are awfully ignorant; -- then chiding her for being so parochial as to think English is the only language that matters; -- then noting that her mother’s elitism leads her to false conclusions about working people. Harriot archly points out that not so long ago, men who could read and write held all the power in “the whole southern section of the United States,†and the results were dismal. <br /><br />“[W]e are ever vainly trying to get morals and character out of intellect, but they grow on quite other soil.†Though ElizCadyStanton fired back a few weeks later, apparently their mother-daughter relationship was undamaged, and Harriot had asserted her political independence.
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04/27/2020
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin was an incredible organizer of women. In 1879 she started the Boston Kansas Relief Assoc. to raise money to support Exodusters - the first African-Americans to leave the South en masse. <br /><br />She helped Lucy Stone & Julia Ward Howe found the American Woman Suffrage Assoc in Boston, after the split with Stanton & Anthony. She was a charter member of the Massachusetts School Suffrage Assoc, organizing women to use their first small opportunity to vote in school board elections. <br /><br />Josephine was born in Boston & educated in Salem b/c her parents refused to send her to Boston’s segregated schools. <br /><br />She was 16 when she married George Ruffin. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1869 (!) & became Boston’s 1st Black judge. As a member of the state legislature, he supported woman suffrage. <br /><br />After George died, Josephine expanded her career as an editor and publisher. She wrote for the Courant, a Black weekly, and was an active member of the New England Women’s Press Assoc, which she helped integrate. <br /><br />In 1890 she and her daughter Florida started The Woman’s Era. <br /><br />The Woman's Era was the first newspaper by and for African-American women. Josephine was editor & publisher. <br /><br />In 1894 they expanded to national distribution, creating a crucial mouthpiece for the women's club movement Josephine was helping to launch. <br /><br />Tomorrow: the movement.
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25/02/2020
Annie Londonderry
IHO @<a href="https://twitter.com/housingworks" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">housingworks</a> @<a href="https://twitter.com/brakingaidsride" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">brakingaidsride</a>, today's @DailySuffragist celebrates the liberating force of cycling! This is more for bicycle buffs than suffrage enthusiasts. But it's worth watching for the story of Annie Londonderry alone. #Suffrage100 #EndAIDS
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14/09/2019
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