"Illegal" voters
We don’t have an affirmative right to vote under the Constitution. There is no explicit promise that citizen = voter. But from 1868-1872, after the ratification of the 14th Amendment, hundreds of white and Black women personally attempted to vote.
Here are some of their names:
Amanda Wall - Washington, DC
Carrie S. Burnham - Philadelphia
Catharine Stebbins - Michigan (pictured)
Catharine V. Waite - Illinois
Charlotte B. Anthony - Rochester
Ellen Rand van Valkenberg - Santa Cruz, California
Ellen S. Baker - Rochester
Emily Pitt Stevens - San Francisco
Guelma Anthony McLean - Rochester
Hannah Anthony Mosher - Rochester
Hannah M. Chatfield - Rochester
Hannah Stone - Roseville, NJ
Jane M. Cogswell - Rochester
Louise Mansfield - Nyack, NY
Lucy Stone - Roseville, NJ
Margaret Garrigues Leyden - Rochester
Margaret Pryor and 171 women in Vineland, NJ
Marilla M. Ricker - Dover, New Hampshire (pictured)
Mary Anderson - Washington, DC
Mary Ann Shadd Cary - Washington, DC
Mary E. Pulver - Rochester
Mary Olney Brown - Olympia, Washington
Mary S. Anthony - Rochester
Mary S. Hebard - Rochester
Mary Wilson - Battle Creek, Michigan
Matilda Joslyn Gage - Fayetteville, NY
Nancy M. Chapman - Rochester
Nanette Gardner - Detroit
Rhoda DeGarmo - Rochester
Sara Andrews Spencer - Washington, DC
Sarah Cole Truesdale - Rochester
Sarah E. Webster - Washington, DC
Sarah M. T. Huntington - Norwalk, CT
Susan B. Anthony - Rochester
Susan M. Hough - Rochester
Tennessee Claflin - New York City
Victoria Woodhull - New York City
Virginia Minor - St. Louis
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1323108100254109696" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread</a>
November 1, 2020
#DCStatehoodNow
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Have you heard about the time Frederick Douglass, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, and Belva Lockwood all occupied the Washington, D.C. Board of Elections? </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">#DCStatehood Thread </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">It’s April 14, 1871. DC’s first city-wide election was less than a week away. For the first time, the consolidated city would get to choose its own legislature and someone to represent them in Congress. Headlines blared: “Our New Government”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The 15th Amendment was barely a year old. Leading up to the April election, the local paper anxiously tallied registered voters by race, reassuring readers that the white advantage was still strong.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Republicans were the favorites, but Washington was a southern city. Democrats were running on the platform “Opposed to Mixed Schools.”</span><span style="font-weight:400;"> (It was printed on the ballot.)</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Women wanted in.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">That January, Victoria Woodhull had challenged suffragists to try and register and vote, then sue and go to prison if needed to exercise their full citizenship under the 14th Amendment. She called this strategy “the New Departure.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Local women formed the DC Women’s Franchise Association and met for months - 19 meetings! - to concoct a plan to vote.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">They took action that Friday in April, one of the last days to register. At 2:15, “the advance guard” arrived at City Hall. Dr. Mary Walker and Belva Lockwood bought bouquets for the registrars. Frederick Douglass arrived soon after, to lend support.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Stop to picture the scene. It is shortly after the Civil War. Frederick Douglass was one of the most famous men in America, and a huge presence in DC. Dr Walker was also a well-known public figure: a Civil War hero and a genderbending rebel. She was unmistakable. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Belva Lockwood was not yet famous for demanding to practice law, lobbying Congress for the right to do so, arguing cases before the Supreme Court, and running for President. </span><span style="font-weight:400;">In 1871 Lockwood was a suffrage leader, a 40-year-old w/a toddler, and a law student. Her husband Ezekiel came with her to register. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">By 4 o’clock a large crowd of women had gathered. Sara Andrews Spencer, whose name would ultimately grace the lawsuit they intended to bring, was the ringleader.</span><span style="font-weight:400;"> Editor and lawyer Mary Ann Shadd Cary was there—white women may not have recognized her, but Frederick Douglass respected her enormously.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The group approached the man in charge, John S. Crocker. He was African American, one of two Black men on the 7-member Board of Registration. “The board is obliged to deprive itself of the agreeable duty of complying with your request,” he said.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Between the would-be voters and the husbands and lawyers accompanying them, there were at least 100 people crowded around inside City Hall. ⬇️ Crocker apologetically tried to encourage the women to give up and go home.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Not a chance. The women insisted on being treated like ordinary registrants. After some fussing, each woman registered at the proper desk for her district, swore out an affidavit with her name, her residence, and that she wished to register.</span><span style="font-weight:400;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Dr. Walker couldn’t resist a speech: “Gentlemen...So long as you tax women, and deprive them of the franchise, you but make yourselves tyrants. You imprison women for crimes you have forbidden women to legislate upon.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">“Either do not hold women responsible for any crimes, do not tax their property...or give woman her rights as a human being.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">At least 68 women tried to register that day. The group had prepared a petition in advance. Lockwood is on that list, but Shadd Cary and Dr Walker aren’t. Shadd Cary may have decided to join at the last minute. Perhaps Walker wanted to register in NY, where she later ran for office.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">But they were definitely there. Shadd Cary wrote an essay about the day, called “A First Vote, Almost.” At least two other Black women sought to register: Amanda Wall and Mary Anderson. As was common then, they are listed on the petition with “col’d” after their names.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">One white woman who registered was fired from her job. A federal civil servant was threatened with dismissal. Some newspapers suggested the women’s husbands should divorce them, but there are no reports of splits.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Five days later the group met at Sara Spencer’s Spencerian Business College to discuss what to do the next morning, Election Day. Their denied registrations were enough to sue the Board of Registration, but to sue the Board of Elections they needed to try and actually vote.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Elsewhere in the city, the Board of Elections was having its own meeting that night. “They knew that they would be sued if they rejected their ballots, and they felt that the City Government would sue them if they accepted them.”</span><span style="font-weight:400;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">On the morning of April 20, 1871, women went to the polls all over the city. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Each woman insisted on having the pollworker search the rolls for her name. Not being found, she handed over a prepared affidavit: I am a resident of the District; a legally qualified voter under the Constitution; I sought to register and was refused. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Spoilers: they lost their lawsuit. And DC’s partial self-rule lasted three years.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">As it happens, one of the only places women COULD vote then was Wyoming—a smaller population than DC, then and now.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">150 years later, Wyoming has 2 Senators; DC 0.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">#19thamendment #DCStatehoodNow </span></p>
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1358989104227241991" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread</a>
February 9, 2021
How impact litigation works
1. Like all good civil disobedience actions, Susan B Anthony’s was well-planned. Century of Struggle describes the whole effort: she recruited more than a dozen women to vote together, “assured herself of first-rate legal advice, and promised the election inspectors... <br /><br />2. (whom she had convinced by the force of her arguments that they should register her group) that she would cover all costs if legal steps were taken against them!” In the months before her trial she spoke so widely in the county that the prosecution demanded a change of venue. <br /><br />3. Susan B’s goal was to get her case to the Supreme Court, which President Grant was determined to prevent. Although she was convicted, she was only fined $100 - the law provided for up to $500 - and when she refused to pay, Judge Hunt didn’t jail her, thwarting her on purpose. <br /><br />4. She wanted to go to jail so she could file a writ of habeas corpus to the Supreme Court. The election inspectors who let Susan B and the other Rochester women vote were convicted in the same trial, and then pardoned by President Grant. <br /><br />5. Politicized appointment of unfit Supreme Court justices is not a modern invention. Justice Ward Hunt was appointed by Ulysses S Grant at the request of NY Senator and Republican Party boss Roscoe Conkling. Fin. <a href="https://www.oyez.org/">oyez.org</a> says: “To say that Hunt accomplished little on the Court would be an overstatement. He was given little to do and did just about that.” #Suffrage100
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1192121885087195136" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original Thread</a>.
06/11/2019
I demanded that I should be arrested properly
After Susan B. Anthony voted in 1872, a deputy federal marshal came to her door and asked her to accompany him downtown. “What for?" she asked. "To arrest you," he said. "Is that the way you arrest men?" "No." "Then I demanded that I should be arrested properly.”
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1180892866840875010" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
06/10/2019
The New Departure - Mary Ann Shadd Cary & Frederick Douglass
In the spring of 1871, Mary Ann Shadd Cary and Frederick Douglass led at least 63 Black & white women to attempt to register to vote in Washington DC. She was turned away by the Board of Registration, whose members included 2 Black men who surely knew her by reputation. Thread.<br /><br />Cary made the episode into an essay, “A First Vote Almost” explaining the New Departure and arguing that Republicans needed to embrace it, b/c capitulating to the Democrats’ derision amounted to endorsing their view that all of the Reconstruction amendments were invalid.<br /><br />Mary Ann Shadd Cary’s biographer, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/06/obituaries/mary-ann-shadd-cary-abolitionist-overlooked.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jane Rhodes, notes</a> how painful it must have been to see men from the community get to vote, and be excluded.
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1180648894537064448" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
5/10/2019
The New Departure - Susan B.
<span>In the Presidential election of 1872, Ulysses S Grant was challenged by Horace Greeley. Grant was corrupt and incompetent, and Greeley opposed suffrage. Women voters didn’t have much of a choice - which was appropriate, since there weren’t any women voters. <br /><br />Susan B Anthony was already famous when she & 14 other women successfully registered to vote in Rochester NY. At the polls on Nov 5 1872, their credentials were challenged. The state inspectors asked under oath if Anthony was a citizen, if she lived in the district, and <br /><br />...if she had accepted any bribe for her vote. She said no. They accepted her ballot. 12 days later she was under arrest. <a href="https://twitter.com/AnnDGordon" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@AnnDGordon</a> tells the whole story: <a href="https://www.fjc.gov/sites/default/files/trials/susanbanthony.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://t.co/ZyKi7qf5ot</a> They weren’t the only women who tried to vote. <br /><br />The New Departure was a direct action and litigation strategy: women would try to vote, be turned away, then sue the registrar. The goal was to get the Supreme Court to say the 14th & 15th Amendments defined voting as an inherent right of citizenship for all. #Suffrage100 <br /><br /></span>
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1180232195098759169" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
04/10/2019
Women went to jail for the vote, part I
Women went to jail for the vote at three significant periods in American history. In the modern civil rights movement, Fannie Lou Hamer, Diane Nash and Ella Baker designed strategies for which men got credit. In the last years before the 19th Amdt, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns led hundreds of women to prison, hunger strikes, and force-feeding. And from 1868-1873, at least 700 women voted or attempted to vote in local, state, and federal elections, and many were arrested - including Susan B Anthony. More tomorrow! Oct 04, 2019
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1179953086376353793" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
03/10/2019