#BreonnaTaylorMatters
More extraordinary Kentucky women, in honor of #BreonnaTaylor. Dr. Mary Britton is featured alongside other journalist-suffragists like Lucy Wilmot Smith and Mary Virginia Cook-Parrish in this beautiful feature by @MayaMillett for @nybooks 👉👉ðŸ¾
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1310285075699896321" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread</a>
Sept 27, 2020
<a href="https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/11/23/the-heroines-of-americas-black-press/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>The Heroines of America's Black Press</em></a>
Mary & Ida: newswomen
Black women in Louisville, Kentucky. 1887. <br /><br />IdaBWells was a rising newspaper star with a weekly column in the American Baptist. That August her publisher, Wm J Simmons, paid Ida’s way from Memphis for the annual convention of the National Colored Press Association.🧵 <br /><br />William Simmons👇made a point to hire Black women as reporters & typesetters at his paper. He was also the president of the Press Association, and he wanted Ida to be seen. Ida was only 25 years old - even younger than in the photo above left. <br /><br />Ida was a star at the convention. She delivered a paper titled “How I Would Edit,†served on the conference resolutions committee, and was elected the first woman on the Association board. At the closing dinner she was asked to speak extemporaneously about women in journalism. Coverage of the convention described her as “brilliant and earnest†and “the most prominent correspondent.†<br /><br />After the convention Ida spent three weeks in Louisville & Lexington, where she visited another young woman journalist who shared her interests. <br /><br />Mary E Britton was seven years older than Ida, and an established journalist. They were introduced by Mary’s sister Julia Britton Hooks, a pianist and prominent community leader whom Ida knew in Memphis. <a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1215019466423230464" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Read more about Julia 👉</a><br /><br />Like Ida, Mary Britton taught school--a respectable job and a stable income. She was already a committed supporter of women’s suffrage, and and a month before they met Mary gave a passionate speech about suffrage at the annual convention of the KY State Assoc of Colored Teachers. <br /><br />“There must be men of honor among you here this evening who are ashamed that women bear equally with men the support of their families; in many instances working harder, better, and of longer duration, and yet receive smaller compensation for their labor, only bc they are women.â€Â <br /><br />Mary went on to make the case: disputing bad theology, decrying taxation without representation, and quoting famous male suffragists like Frederick Douglass & Henry Ward Beecher. Her speech was reprinted on the front page of the American Catholic Tribune, a national paper. <br /><br />While Ida was not yet focused on suffrage as a political issue, she and Mary had a lot in common. Besides their professional interests, intellectualism, and ambition, they had both been orphaned in their teens and raised younger siblings. <br /><br />When Kentucky moved to segregate transit in 1891, Mary Britton addressed the legislature with a speech so fierce that Paul Lawrence Dunbar wrote a poem about it. Entitled “To Miss Mary Britton,†it goes: <br /><br />Give us to lead our cause More noble souls like hers, <br />The memory of whose deed Each feeling bosom stirs; <br />Whose fearless voice and strong Rose to defend her race, <br />Roused Justice from her sleep, Drove Prejudice from place. <br /><br />Mary was more successful in Dunbar’s heroic ode than in reality. The racist bill passed. <br /><br />While Ida became an internationally famous activist and muckracking reporter, Mary went to medical school. She was the first Black woman doctor in Kentucky, and a leader in state and national professional associations. <br /><br />Mary Britton was the Kentucky vice president for the National Medical Association. Here she is at the 1910 meeting of the Black Kentucky Medical Workers. She's easy to pick out. <br /><br />Mary died in 1925, leaving her library to the Seventh Day Adventist church and her estate to her sister Julia Hooks. <br /><br />#BlackSuffragists #Suffrage100 #BreonnaTaylorMatters
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1309668104297906176" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread</a>
Sept 26, 2020
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000007357661/breonna-taylor-louisville-protests.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Protests Erupt in Louisville After Breonna Taylor Decision</a>
School suffrage in Kentucky begins
If you could only vote for school board--not Governor, Senator or President--would you? <br /><br />Kentucky was the first state to let some women have “school suffrage." Waaay first: 1838. (For comparison, Massachusetts women win school suffrage in 1879.) <br /><br />Which women? Why? Read on . . . <br /><br />Kentucky decided it wasn’t fair that widows with children had no say in how the schools were funded and run. Married moms had husbands to ‘represent’ their interests. (Free men got to vote for school board even if they weren’t fathers, but everything was men’s business.) <br /><br />And of course, the 165,000+ people then enslaved in Kentucky had neither votes nor schools. So fairness was a relative concept…. But in 1838 the men of the Kentucky legislature decided to let “female heads of household” vote in school board & tax elections. <br /><br />Today “widow” conjures up a senior, but in the 1830s average life expectancy was 39 years old. Many women found themselves single mothers, not by choice, in Kentucky and everywhere. <br /><br />Keep in mind, 1838 is practically prehistoric in suffrage terms. A few remarkable women were agitating for equal rights in the 1830s, but nowhere else in the US could women vote for any government office. New Jersey had revoked women’s suffrage in 1807; voting in Wyoming & the Utah territory was still 30+ years away. <br /><br />Kentucky’s school suffrage was only for some women, only in some places, and only in some elections. It acknowledged the fundamental injustice of being unrepresented, while limiting that representation to proximate, domestic issues. <br /><br />50 years later, Kentucky expanded school suffrage - then revoked it shortly afterward. Why? Tune in tomorrow. Hint: the answer has a lot to do with who turned out to vote. <br /><br />#suffrage100 #19thAmendment #BreonnaTaylorMatters
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1311862213343412225" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread</a>
Oct 1, 2020
<a href="https://dailysuffragist.omeka.net/admin/items/show/524" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">School suffrage in Kentucky ends</a>
1838
School suffrage in Kentucky ends
<p>Kentucky was first in the nation to grant women school suffrage: the right to vote in school board elections. More than 50 years later, the legislature 👇expanded -- and then abruptly revoked -- school suffrage. How come? Because Black women turned out. 🧵</p>
<p>By 1901, the state legislature had extended school suffrage twice. The patchwork (see yesterday's post) now covered more women in more cities. Lawmakers understood that the new voters would include KY’s politically mobilized Black women - they just didn’t expect so many of them.</p>
<p>Democrats were generally anxious about holding onto control of the state. In Lexington, the Democratic kingpin was pretty sure he had bought the Black vote with a patronage appointment of the school superintendent. But he miscalculated. </p>
<p>Black voters loathed the superintendent. In a letter to the paper, school board member Dr. P.D. Robinson wondered “if the white people know that not one tax-paying representative Negro was willing to go before the School Board and speak in behalf of [Superintendent] Russell?â€ðŸ‘‡</p>
<p>G.P. Russell was a hack, and the community demanded better. African American women had registered that fall specifically to oppose him in the school board election.</p>
<p>Their registrations were visible -- because they registered in person, and they registered as Republicans. This chart by @rhollingsworth shows the Republican registration advantage going into the 1901 election.</p>
<p>Democrats used voter intimidation & long lines at the polls to suppress votes. Only 50% of registered voters cast ballots - compared to 93% a few years before.</p>
<p>Low turnout by white women magnified the impact of Black votes for Republicans - and the Democrats freaked out. [Standard 19th c. disclaimer: Democrats were the more overtly racist party at the time; Republicans moderately less so.]</p>
<p>Within months, the legislature repealed the expansion of school suffrage. White women tried to bargain, happy to throw Black women under the bus. They suggested adding a literacy test - but they were too weak to engineer that compromise.</p>
<p>How do we know racism motivated the rollback? Maybe it was just partisan politics, right? One party wants to win so they try to disenfranchise the other party - could happen! Wellll…. here are some receipts:</p>
<ul><li>
<p>Senator Embry Allen wrote a constituent that “he could not endure the idea of this race of people, who are so easily made arrogant and overbearing, being allowed to control our schools.â€</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>“We will have to give up any rights that will give additional rights to the negro,†wrote Mary Atkinson Cunningham, a prominent DAR member. “[I]t seems to me to be infinitely preferable to have the board controlled by men than by negroes and a few white women.â€</p>
</li>
</ul><p>School suffrage was eventually reinstated -- but not until the legislature was certain who would vote. By 1912, aggressive use of poll taxes and literacy tests successfully quashed Black votes. That year white women statewide won the right to choose their school boards.</p>
<p>There’s even more to this story - bribery, prostitution, assassinations! - all well-told by @rhollingsworth in Ohio Valley History. I'm indebted to her and @MelanieGoan @anya_jabour + context from @missmelbeck & @fraziermuseum.</p>
<p>#suffrage100 #BreonnaTaylorMatters</p>
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1312164977013260291" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread</a>
Oct 2, 2020
<a href="https://dailysuffragist.omeka.net/admin/items/show/id/523" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">School suffrage in Kentucky begins</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/27/us/elections/voting-rights-georgia.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>How Could Voter Suppression Affect the Presidential Election? Look at Georgia</em></a>
Voters: Louisville, Kentucky.
<em>Photographs from University of Louisville Library's <a href="http://digital.library.louisville.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/cs/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Caufield & Shook collection</a>.<br /><br />See thread image for illuminating replies re: Kentucky voters.</em>
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1310022802750267399" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread</a>
Sept 26, 2020