Racist Propaganda
What's a Rochester suffragist from Susan B Anthony's day doing on a racist anti-suffrage leaflet in Virginia circa 1920? Read on . . . <br /><br />Julie O’Connor <a href="https://twitter.com/albanymuskrat" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@AlbanyMuskrat</a> recently called my attention to Hester Jeffrey, a prominent African American suffragist and clubwoman in western NY. Originally from Boston, Hester moved to Rochester in 1891 and quickly expanded political life for women in her new city. <br /><br />She held leadership positions in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union & the Needlework Guild of America. After Frederick Douglass died she was appointed to his Monument Committee. She sponsored scholarships for Black women at what’s now Rochester Inst. of Technology. <a href="https://twitter.com/RITtigers" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@RITtigers</a> <br /><br />Rosalyn Terborg-Penn describes Hester as active across networks of Black club women and white suffragists. She was president of the New York Federation of Colored Women, and she represented the Federation at the New York Woman Suffrage Association convention in 1905.<br /><br />In 1902, when New York women could vote in school board elections but nothing else, Hester Jeffrey founded the Susan B Anthony Club. The group organized Black women for charity work and suffrage. SusanB, of course, was the most famous woman in Rochester, and Hester knew her well. <br /><br />When Susan B died in 1906, Hester Jeffrey gave a eulogy alongside local politicians and suffrage leaders Anna Howard Shaw & Carrie Chapman Catt. <br /><br />Speaking on behalf of “the colored people of Rochester...the colored churches in this city, the National and State Federations of Colored Women, the federated clubs of the association†she expressed sorrow at the loss of a “friend for many years†and pledged that the members of the Club would “devote our time and energies to the work thou has left us to do.†<br /><br />Hester Jeffrey led the creation of the first memorial to Susan B, a stained glass window at Rochester’s Memorial A.M.E. Zion church, installed in 1907. (When the church moved in the 1970s, I believe they took the window to their new home - along with one of Harriet Tubman.) <br /><br />I’d been thinking about Hester for a few days when I opened Terborg-Penn’s book to look for more. I was startled to see the familiar face of Hester Jeffrey hijacked onto anti-suffragist propaganda. 👆The flyer is unhinged; it seems to argue that suffrage leads to race-mixing. <br /><br />Its author was James Callaway, a columnist for the Macon (GA) Daily Telegraph. In 1918 he wrote a screed against the “Susan B Anthony Amendment†that accused Anthony, along with Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Howard Shaw of, well, having Black friends. Exhibit A was Hester Jeffrey. <br /><br />Callaway also named Frederick Douglass, Robert Purvis, and Booker T. Washington as friends of Susan B's - and by association, the living suffrage leaders. <br /><br />Of course, this is weird and more than a little ironic. <br /><br />Susan B and those men were long dead; Catt and Shaw were hardly integrationists. (They were lesbians, though - could that be what Callaway was insinuating by “immediate women friendsâ€?) <br /><br />But racism doesn’t make sense. <br /><br />Terborg-Penn explains that the closer a federal suffrage bill came to passing, the harder white supremacists worked to sabotage it. Anti-suffragists took Callaway’s article & turned it into a leaflet they used against Carrie Catt when she campaigned for ratification in Virginia. <br /><br />And that’s how Hester Jeffrey, suffragist and clubwoman of Rochester - and by 1920 a full voter in New York state - ended up on a flyer in Virginia. #BlackSuffragists #CenturyofStruggle #19thAmendment <br /><br />Correction and more! Susan Goodier's essay says that after Hester was widowed in 1914, she moved back to Boston to live with her sister. She died in 1934.Â
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1281069215496187905" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
14/07/2020
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Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward of Weeksville
Sarah Smith Garnet & Dr. Susan Smith-McKinney Steward were sisters - Sarah the eldest of 10, Susan the 7th. <br /><br />Together, their impact on Brooklyn's African-American community was immense. <br /><br />Their suffrage contributions - Sarah's especially - were significant.<br /><br />They grew up on Long Island and in @Weeksville, an independent Black community in Brooklyn founded in 1838. Their father Sylvanus was a prominent abolitionist and community leader. <br /><br />Susan went to medical school at the New York Medical College, which Dr. Clemence Lozier had founded in 1863 so other women would have an easier path into medicine than her own.<br /><br />Susan graduated in 1870, valedictorian of her class. <br /><br />She was the third African-American woman to graduate medical school in the US. She built a thriving pediatric and OB practice in Brooklyn and founded the Women's Hospital & Dispensary and the Homeopathic Hospital. She treated Black and white patients in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. <br /><br />The townhouse where she lived and worked still stands, as does the impressive red brick Brooklyn Home for the Aged in Weeksville, where she was the physician of record for two decades. @<a href="https://twitter.com/Brownstoner" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">brownstoner</a> illustrates accomplishments with site-specific photos <a href="https://www.brownstoner.com/history/african-american-history-brooklyn-fort-greene-dr-susan-smith-mckinney-steward-205-dekalb-avenue/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://t.co/ZMsyksxlHg</a> <br /><br />Dr. McKinney is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery with a terrific headstone. A block of Prospect Place is named in her honor, and a medical society founded in 1974 is named for her. Read more about Dr. McKinney on the @<a href="https://twitter.com/BKLYNlibrary" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BKLYNLibrary</a> site <a href="https://www.bklynlibrary.org/blog/2018/01/25/susan-smith-mckinney" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://t.co/PhlDTpw5jO</a> <br /><br />...and listen to the <a href="https://twitter.com/brooklynhistory" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@BrooklynHistory</a> podcast about her: <a href="https://www.brooklynhistory.org/podcasts/flatbush-main-episode-25-brooklyns-pioneering-women-doctors/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://t.co/xViA0yXvWm</a> <br /><br />In 1902, Susan helped her older sister create the Brooklyn Equal Suffrage League, the city's first African-American organization devoted to women's suffrage. Tune in tomorrow for more. #BlackSuffragists #Suffrage100
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1264741351305986050" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a><br /><a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1371306708333686793" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Repost on March 14, 2021</a>
25/05/2020
<a href="DR.%20BLACKWELL,%20DR.%20LOZIER,%20DR.%20CRUMPLER" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DR. BLACKWELL, DR. LOZIER, DR. CRUMPLER</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.brownstoner.com/history/african-american-history-brooklyn-fort-greene-dr-susan-smith-mckinney-steward-205-dekalb-avenue/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A Brownstone for a Remarkable Woman, Brookyn’s Pioneering Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward</a><br /><br /><br /><iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/444120888&color=%2342586f&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true"></iframe>
<div style="font-size:10px;color:#cccccc;white-space:nowrap;font-family:Interstate, 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Lucida Sans', Garuda, Verdana, Tahoma, sans-serif;font-weight:100;"><a href="https://soundcloud.com/brooklynhistory" title="BHS" target="_blank" style="color:#cccccc;text-decoration:none;" rel="noreferrer noopener">BHS</a> · <a href="https://soundcloud.com/brooklynhistory/flatbush-main-ep-25-brooklyns-pioneering-women-doctors-may-2018" title="Flatbush + Main Ep 25: Brooklyn's Pioneering Women Doctors (May 2018)" target="_blank" style="color:#cccccc;text-decoration:none;" rel="noreferrer noopener">Flatbush + Main Ep 25: Brooklyn's Pioneering Women Doctors (May 2018)</a></div>