"Unladylike"
Have you seen the PBS series Unladylike? It features suffragists like Mary Church Terrell, Rose Schneiderman, and Tye Leung Schulze alongside other notables (Gladys Bentley!) <br /><br />1. Each 12-minute episode features a contemporary activist who mirrors the historical woman. <br /><br />In the Terrell segment they feature <span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span>
<div class="css-1dbjc4n r-xoduu5"><span class="r-18u37iz"><a href="https://twitter.com/MsPackyetti" dir="ltr" class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-901oao css-16my406 r-1n1174f r-1loqt21 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">@MsPackyetti</a></span> and for Schneiderman, <a href="https://twitter.com/aijenpoo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@aijenpoo</a>. Both good choices. <br /><br />2. The voices of Lorraine Touissant & Juliana Margulies are heard throughout; eg Touissant voices Terrell while Margulies narrates -- then vice-versa for Schneiderman. <br /><br /><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/masters/unladylike2020/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The segments are all available to watch.</a> Which ones did you watch? What do you think? </div>
Daily Suffragist
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23/07/2020
Black Memphis, white Memphis
Julia Hooks bought a ticket at a downtown Memphis theater. It was 1881 and "Hermann the Magician" was a hit. She was making her way to her seat when two policemen grabbed her. They ripped her dress in the struggle, arresting her as she cried: “Let go of me, I am a schoolteacher!”
Hooks filed a complaint against the officers, but they weren’t punished.
Instead, Julia Hooks was fined $5 for disorderly conduct - particularly ironic, because she was about the least disorderly person in Memphis.
A gifted pianist, Julia’s concerts were the center of Black Memphis social life in the 1880s; Ida B Wells met Mary Church Terrell at one of them.
Julia and her sister Mary were the first Black women to graduate from Berea College in Kentucky, which was integrated until 1904.
I’ll return to Mary Britton, who became a well-known journalist in Louisville and then the first Black woman doctor in KY.
Another sister, Hattie, killed herself after being slut-shamed by Ida B Wells - also a story for another day.
Where was I? Julia. She was eventually known as the Angel of Beale Street for her good works. She started a classical music society, then an integrated music school whose pupils included WC Handy(!), and later an Orphans & Old Folks Home that she funded with her concert earnings.
But when the police were dragging her out of the theater because management had suddenly designated the section for whites only, she called out “I’m a schoolteacher” to demonstrate her respectability in a way that white people might understand.
Paula Giddings explains why teaching was an esteemed profession for women: “In Memphis, a certified teacher not only had to pass a written exam, she also had to demonstrate ‘good moral character’ and ‘the purest and truest of natures’ to the satisfaction of a biracial board.”
During Reconstruction, when Black men voted and held state & local office, Memphis reformers lobbied hard for Black schools & Black teachers. There was only one high school, but it was a good one.
And incredibly, men and women, blacks and whites, were paid equally to teach.
Pay equity in schools owed in part to Memphis’ leading white suffragist, Elizabeth Avery Meriwether. Throughout the 1870s she lobbied tirelessly for equal pay for male and female teachers.
When 3 teachers were fired for “holding too many of Mrs. Meriwether’s views” - the actual reason the superintendent gave for their dismissal! - she led a 7-month fight that ended with them reinstated and a new superintendent installed.
Essentially a lone voice, she demanded the all-male school board be replaced by a gender-balanced group. Equal pay legislation she helped pass was undermined in a closed-door session, but her lobbying had impact.
After teacher salaries were slashed in 1878 due to budget cuts, men and women were paid the same in both the Black and white school systems.
One result was that white men left teaching entirely. Another was that Black women had access to a career.
Meriwether was Memphis’ most visible advocate for women’s equality through the 1870s & 80s.
She demanded fair divorce laws, equal pay, and votes for white women.
In 1876 she rented out a local theater to give her own lecture on women’s rights under the law.
The same year she lobbied the national Democratic convention - remember, they were the party of Southern white conservatism - to include women’s suffrage in their platform.
Meriwether was an active member of the National Woman Suffrage Assoc, even joining Susan B Anthony on a speaking tour.
In 1880 she submitted 2 petitions to the NWSA national convention, one signed by 130 white women and the other by 110 black women, courtesy of her servant.
She sent both petitions with a note describing how the servant, whom she doesn’t name, heard her describing suffrage to guests and after dinner offered to collect signatures from black women. “She took the paper and procured these 110 signatures against the strong opposition...
"...of black men who in some cases threatened to whip their wives if they signed. At length the opposition was so great my servant had not courage to face it. She feared bodily harm...by the black men.”
Meriwether doesn’t explain why the white women gathered barely more names.
One more thing about Elizabeth Meriwether:
In 1867 she and her husband Minor hosted a gathering in their home, which they had reestablished after spending the war in exile. Elizabeth followed Minor, a Confederate officer. Their 3rd son (Lee, of course) was born on the road.
Minor survived the war, as did fellow Memphis Confederates Matt Galloway and Nathan Bedford Forrest. Reunited in the Meriwethers' living room, they founded the local chapter of the KKK.
Elizabeth’s contribution was to suggest that their platform include votes for white women. /
Daily Suffragist
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01/08/2020
Black women at the Inaugural March, part I
As 1913 began, planning was underway for a massive suffrage march and pageant to take place in Washington, DC on March 3, the day before #WoodrowWilson’s inauguration. <br /><br />Black women wrote the organizers to ask if they were welcome. If you have to ask . . . 🧵 <br /><br />Nellie Quander wrote Alice Paul on Feb 17, oozing politeness. “Fearing that a letter which I sent you has gone astray…†she begins, and then restates her question: Will the @<a href="https://twitter.com/HowardU">HowardU</a> AKA women march in the collegiate section? Or will they be segregated at the back of the march? <br /><br />Alice Paul, the lead organizer, had for weeks been ducking this and other questions about African American women’s participation. Throughout January she wrote Alice Stone Blackwell, editor of the largest suffrage publication, trying to keep the issue out of the paper. <br /><br />They didn’t succeed. Adella Hunt Logan, an African American suffragist who taught at @<a href="https://twitter.com/TuskegeeUniv" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TuskegeeUniv</a> in Alabama, noticed an item in the Woman’s Journal saying white women wouldn’t march if Black women participated. She tipped off Mary Church Terrell.<br /><br />Terrell was in DC, and able to rally local Black suffragists. Among them were the Alpha Kappa Alpha women. Nellie Quander was eager to get an assurance from the march organizers b/c a group of her members was threatening to break off & create a more politically engaged sorority. <br /><br />They did -- creating Delta Sigma Theta @<a href="https://twitter.com/dstinc1913" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">dstinc1913</a> See illustration of the founders👇ðŸ¾The Deltas’ first public action was to march in the suffrage parade. Mary Church Terrell marched with them. Ironically, in the end the @<a href="https://twitter.com/akasorority1908" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">akasorority1908</a> didn’t march as a group. <br /><br />All the white northern women organizing the march insisted to one another that while THEY weren’t racist, they feared an integrated march would hurt the cause. Their letters make clear they all wished Black women wouldn’t show up. <br /><br />Tomorrow: Ida B Wells arrives from Chicago.
Daily Suffragist
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28/06/2020
Higher ed.
Second & third generation suffragists had much more access to formal education than the women who came before them. Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, and Ida Gibbs Hunt graduated from @<a href="https://twitter.com/oberlincollege" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">oberlincollege</a> in 1884. 🧵 <br /><br />They weren’t the first Black women at Oberlin - Mary Jane Patterson 👇ðŸ¾graduated in 1862. Oberlin was founded by abolitionists in 1833; by the 1880s 5-6% of students were African American. <br /><br />Anna Julia Cooper fought to study with men at Oberlin, not segregated into a “ladies’ course.†She won, and graduated with a master's in math. 40 years later she earned her PhD at the University of Paris. She was 66. <br /><br />Lucy Stone was one of the only women in the founding suffragist generation to go to college; she graduated from Oberlin in 1847. She didn’t leave with fond feelings, though. See 👇🾠<br /><br />Stone was younger than Lucretia Mott, a grandmother of the movement. When she was born in 1793, a university education was out of the question for a girl. In 1864 Mott helped start @<a href="https://twitter.com/swarthmore" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">swarthmore</a>. Alice Paul graduated Swarthmore class of 1905. Suffragist Mabel Vernon was '06. <br /><br />Alice went on to the London School of Economics, but dropped her courses to train with UK suffragettes. After imprisonment & force-feeding, she came home to recuperate. Her idea of rest was a PhD at @<a href="https://twitter.com/Penn" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Penn</a>. Her dissertation was “The Legal Position of Women in Pennsylvania.†<br /><br />In 2004 Swarthmore students voted to name a new dorm Alice Paul Hall. In 2018 Oberlin named its main library in honor of Mary Church Terrell. @<a href="https://twitter.com/ObieLib" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">obielib</a> I couldn’t find anything significant named for Anna Julia Cooper, Ida Gibbs-Hunt or Lucy Stone. #Suffrage100 #BlackSuffragists
Daily Suffragist
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25/07/2020
<a href="https://dailysuffragist.omeka.net/items/show/152" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">More Lucy Stone</a>
Mary Church Terrell
The end of legal slavery didn’t make a dent in white Americans’ racism. The opposite, really: after the Civil War Northern whites patted themselves on the back for being so virtuous, then turned around and passed laws making it harder for African-Americans to vote, live, work. 🧵 <br /><br />As the century turned, Black women’s clubs were growing rapidly across the country. Meanwhile the Natl American Woman Suffrage Assoc had effectively become a whites-only organization. Still, leading African-Americans came to NAWSA conventions seeking help in fighting segregation. <br /><br />In 1898, Mary Church Terrell addressed the NAWSA convention in Washington, DC. Terrell was the president of the National Association of Colored Women, and prominent in DC Black society. Her roots went back to Holly Springs, Miss. - coincidentally, the same town as Ida B Wells. <br /><br />Terrell’s father was one of the first Black millionaires in the South. She had advantages Wells could only dream of, including a degree from @<a href="https://twitter.com/oberlincollege" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">oberlincollege</a>. Terrell supported Booker T Washington’s ingratiating approach to Black survival, which her speech to NAWSA reflected. <br /><br />Rather than demanding equality based on human rights or the Constitution, Terrell described Black women’s educational attainment and industry. She closed with her signature phrase, the motto of NACW: “lifting as we climb, onward and upward we go, struggling and striving.and hoping that the buds and blossoms of our desires will burst into glorious fruition ere long.†<br /><br />She was greeted politely, but her speech is given scant mention in the conference proceedings (which often excerpted notable speeches at length). <br /><br />(FWIW, two years later she spoke again, and her more universalist speech about the importance of the vote for all women got more attention in the NAWSA record.) Remember, Terrell lived in DC, where NAWSA conferences took place in even numbered years. In between, @ the 1899 convention in Grand Rapids, an African-American delegate named Lottie Wilson Jackson pushed NAWSA to condemn railroad segregation. After heated debate, NAWSA took the position that woman suffrage and African-American rights were completely separate causes. #Suffrage100
Daily Suffragist
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04/25/2020
Passing the torch
The founding of the National Association of Colored Women in 1896 gathered two generations of prominent African-American women in the nation's capital: Josephine Ruffin and Mary Church Terrell; Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, now in her 70s; and Harriet Tubman, living legend. <br /><br />Ida, now Wells-Barnett, was there with her 4 month old son Charles. Ida’s relentlessness didn’t always make her popular, but the prominent women admired her. They moved to introduce the baby to the whole convention. The motion passed. <br /><br />Then Harriet Tubman took Ida B. Wells’ firstborn and raised him over her head before hundreds of African-American women, organized for power. #BlackSuffragists #Suffrage100
Daily Suffragist
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28/02/2020
The Crisis - Suffrage Special Issue 1915
With the New York referendum looming, The Crisis published its second special issue on women’s suffrage in August 1915. The cover was an arresting composite of Abraham Lincoln & Sojourner Truth. 🧵 <br /><br />26 essays by men and women took up almost the entire issue. Even regular features like “Men of the Month†were devoted to women. [<a href="https://dailysuffragist.omeka.net/exhibits/show/black-suffragists/item/382" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Read about @thecrisismag's first suffrage issue, in 1912 👉</a> ]<br /><br />The summer of 1915 was an optimistic moment for voting rights. The Supreme Court had just struck down grandfather clauses in a case from Oklahoma, and women in New York were still optimistic about their chances of winning the vote. (See yesterday’s post.)<br /><br />Later, the Supreme Court win would turn out to be toothless - Oklahoma grandfathered its grandfather clause, automatically adding all white men to the rolls while giving Black men 12 days to register. And women would lose the New York referendum, resoundingly. <br /><br />But the clarity of @<a href="https://twitter.com/thecrisismag" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">thecrisismag</a> special issue endures. It’s an artifact of how the nation’s most prominent Black men and women argued for the inextricability of race and sex at the ballot box. <br /><br />Highlights include: “Many colored men doubt the wisdom of women suffrage because they fear that it will increase the number of our political enemies.†She defends suffragists based on 40 years experience in the movement, asserting: “We can afford to follow those women.†<br /><br />Mary Church Terrell & her husband Judge Robert Terrell make overlapping arguments about the necessity of supporting voting rights for all. She points out sharply that anything less risks weakening the 15th Amendment. <br /><br />Judge Terrell quotes Senator Benjamin Wade, a radical Republican who supported universal suffrage: “I have a contempt I cannot name for the man who would demand rights for himself that he is not willing to grant to every one else.†<br /><br />Nannie Helen Burroughs, leader of the Women’s Convention of the Baptist Church, is blunt: “The Negro Church means the Negro woman. Without her, the race could not properly support five hundred churches in the whole world. Today they have 40,000 churches in the United States.â€<br /><br />Fittingly, poet/novelist/diplomat James Weldon Johnson has the most engagingly wry essay. He begins: “There is one thing very annoying about the cause of Woman Suffrage and that is the absurdity of the arguments against it which one is called upon to combat." <br /><br />The fight for the vote began so long before John Lewis, of blessed memory. We will continue it until every person’s vote counts, no matter how long that takes. We are up to the challenge. (Photo by @<a href="https://twitter.com/AlyssaNo_L" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AlyssaNo_L</a> via @<a href="https://twitter.com/ajc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AJC</a>) #BlackSuffragists #Suffrage100
Daily Suffragist
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26/07/2020