A Black man, a white woman, and suffrage in 1850s Albany
In New York it is said that activists come to Albany, not from it. True or not, in the 1850s and today Albany has produced some truly marvelous people. <br /><br />Among them: Lucretia Mott’s cousin by marriage Lydia Mott, and an African-American businessman named William Topp. Thread. <br /><br />New York runs 400 miles from west to east. In the 1830’s and 1840’s, activists for abolition, women’s property rights, temperance and more criss-crossed the state via the Erie Canal. From its completion in 1825, the canal carried goods and people in both directions. <br /><br />Radical newspapers, books, and lecturers spread ideas throughout the state and to points west and south. Activists from towns like Seneca Falls and bigger cities like Rochester & Syracuse could reach the state capitol in about a week - faster and more comfortably than by wagon. <br /><br />The state convention I described yesterday - Albany, 1854, February, freezing - was co-led by local leaders Lydia Mott and William Topp, and attended by activists from around the state. <br /><br />Lydia Mott was a backbone of suffrage in NY for more than 30 years.<br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WomensDay?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WomensDay</a> LYDIA MOTT (1806 -1875) – most important woman from <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Albany?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Albany</a> you never heard of. Quaker, teacher, shop owner, best friend Susan B. Anthony ( Mott was glue that held together woman’s suffrage movement in the mid-1800s),Underground RR conductor, FORCE OF NATURE! <a href="https://t.co/Oi7qZrPRmO">pic.twitter.com/Oi7qZrPRmO</a></p>
— AlbanyMuskrat (@albanymuskrat) <a href="https://twitter.com/albanymuskrat/status/971823514239078402?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2018</a></blockquote>
<br />Lydia organized state and national conventions, collected funds, coordinated lobbying, and housed visiting activists. Susan B Anthony was a close friend and always stayed at Mott's home when she was in town. The house still stands, on Columbia Street in downtown Albany. <br /><br />So central was Lydia Mott to the movement that in 1855 the New York Evening News lamented that the women’s rights movement needed some new recruits, beside the same-old, same-old: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Lydia Mott. <br /><br />Lydia was closely connected to William Topp, an African-American man who was born free in Albany in 1813. (Remember, slavery persisted in NY until 1817.) <br /><br />By his late 20s Topp was a prominent community leader, active in the Underground RR & the American Anti-Slavery Society. <br /><br />He was a merchant tailor with an upscale shop - when most clothing was made-to-measure - and became the wealthiest African-American in Albany. Lydia Mott owned a gentleman's shop near his - they probably met through a combination of business and abolitionist interests. <br /><br />Lydia and her sister Abigail were very close to Frederick Douglass. They were governesses to his <a href="http://historicwomensouthcoast.org/rosetta-douglass/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">daughter Rosetta</a>, who lived with them in Albany from age 6-11. <br /><br />Topp was active in state & national Colored Conventions, as well as Women’s Rights Conventions. @<a href="https://twitter.com/CCP_org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CCP_org</a> <br /><br />Besides Douglass, we don’t know of many Black men who were deeply committed to women’s rights in this early period, so William Topp’s name matters a lot. <br /><br />After her sister died, Lydia grew even closer to William. When Af-Am abolitionist William Cooper Nell visited Albany in 1852, he stopped in to see Topp. Finding him not at home, he went to Lydia Mott’s - “and there to my agreeable surprise found Mr. Topp and his whole family.”<br /><br />Tragically, Wm Topp died of tuberculosis at 44. He willed $100 to the abolitionist newspaper <em>The Liberator.</em> The same disease claimed Lydia Mott many years later. Susan B Anthony cancelled her speeches to spend a month nursing Lydia to her death in 1875. <br /><br />Upon Lydia’s death, Susan B said, “There has passed out of my life today, the one, next to my own family, who has been the nearest and dearest friend to me for over thirty years.” <br /><br />The relationship among these giants is contained in an amazing artifact at the Library of Congress.<br /><br />Wm Topp gave Lydia Mott an inscribed copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 20 years later, Lydia gave it to Susan B. When Susan gave her papers to LOC, she annotated the book with a long note about Wm Topp - it’s hard to make out, but she begins by calling him “a splendid man.” <br /><br />Thank you Albany for giving the movements these great activists, and @<a href="https://twitter.com/albanymuskrat" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AlbanyMuskrat</a> Julie O’Connor and Friends of Albany History for preserving their stories. #Suffrage100
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1210289293408776192" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
26/12/2019
<a href="http://historicwomensouthcoast.org/rosetta-douglass/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rosetta Douglas biography</a>
Alpha Epsilon Phi
Guest post! Thrilled to welcome @<a href="https://twitter.com/shiram19" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">shiram19</a> to tell us about the suffrage roots of an early Jewish sorority. Read on..<br /><br />On October 24, 1909, Helen Phillips invited 6 friends into her dorm room at Barnard College in NYC. While her friends commuted, she lived on campus & “wanted something to keep her in closer contact with her friends.” That evening, the Alpha Epsilon Phi (AEPhi) sorority was born. <br /><br />Alpha Epsilon was technically not the first Jewish sorority. In 1903, Iota Alpha Pi began at Hunter College. Their purpose was similar to that of AEPhi – to provide camaraderie for young Jewish female collegians, who were few & far between at the turn of the 20th century! <br /><br />Because there’s no easy “I” sound in English to begin an acronym, the IAPi sorority women called themselves “the JAPs,” no relation to either the derogatory term Jewish American Princess or the slur used against Japanese people. <br /><br />AEPhi, like the other Jewish sororities that formed over the course of the 1910s, rose out of a need for Jewish female collegians to gain social and emotional support on college campuses that were often fraught with antisemitism, from the admissions processes to the social scene. <br /><br />Historically Protestant fraternities and sororities that closed their doors to Jewish women were the dominant campus social outlets on colleges across the country. Black and white Catholic women encountered similar exclusion and formed their own sororities during this time too. <br /><br />But back to AEPhi: apparently, Helen and her friends were quite busy because the evening immediately following the formation of AEPhi, the girls served as ushers for a big event happening in midtown – an appearance by UK suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst to discuss women’s equality. <br /><br />Reminiscing about AEPhi’s early years in 1963, founder Tina Hess Solomon brought up what suffrage meant to them: “We were young & full of college spirit…we had serious discussion groups concerned with the events of the day. The most important one was ‘Women’s Suffrage.’” <br /><br />It is slightly ironic that <a href="https://twitter.com/BarnardCollege" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@BarnardCollege</a> served as the site of AEPhi’s founding and as the institution that gave these young Jewish women the inspiration for furthering their interest in suffrage by their participation in the Pankhurst rally. <br /><br />As @DailySuffragist has previously reported, the founder of Barnard, Annie Meyer Nathan, was a notorious anti-suffragist, though her older sister Maud Nathan warmly embraced the cause and was a visible figure within it, as Melissa Klapper has shown.<br /><br />For the founders of AEPhi, women should not only be granted the right to vote, but needed to be informed voters. Shortly after NY finally adopted suffrage in 1917, the @AEPhi Quarterly magazine urged its readership to take voting seriously & become educated on political affairs.<br /><br />In 1918, the Quarterly wrote that in suffrage, “an all-important power has been given to us...the right to vote…Care must be taken to prove the fallacy of the anti-suffrage argument that women voters will only double the number of unintelligent ballots.”<br /><br />Furthermore, AEPhi believed that its membership offered unique knowledge and services to female voters and their civic education due to their higher education and knowledge of “governmental affairs.” <br /><br />Later in 1918, prior to the passage and ratification of the 19th amendment, AEPhi’s Quarterly reminded members that “it is incumbent upon every woman to avail herself of the right of franchise bestowed upon her. It is not only her privilege to vote, but it is also a duty.” <br /><br />By 1918, AEPhi had one of their very own members running for New York office. Attorney Myra Marks was on the Democratic ticket for Member of Assembly in the 15th District. She lost by only 93 votes.<br /><br />AEPhi launched as a Jewish group for women with an investment in political issues & for the next century, the sorority engaged w/ all of the major social and political movements America witnessed, from assisting refugees fleeing Nazism to postwar anticommunism and civil rights.<br /><br />For more on AEPhi and the other historically Jewish sororities, see work by Shira Kohn or Marianne Sanua’s book on Jewish fraternities. For more on Jewish women and suffrage, see Melissa Klapper’s Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace. Cited material courtesy of AEPhi Archives
Daily Suffragist and Dr. Shira Kohn
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1282123040139116550" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
11/07/2020
Dynastic politics
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">What does this guy have to do with this woman?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Hint: dynastic politics.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Charles S. Whitman was elected Governor of New York in 1914. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">By that time he was a committed suffragist. His wife Olive belonged to the Women’s Political Union, which was the spunkiest of New York’s white suffrage groups, founded by Harriot Stanton Blatch.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">As the race for governor heated up in the summer of 1914, the Women’s Political Union was determined to get public commitments from the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Progressive Party. It was a crucial year.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Suffragists were at the midpoint of a multi-year attempt to amend the New York State constitution to add women voters. The amendment had passed the legislature once; it needed to pass again in the upcoming session and then be put to a statewide men’s referendum.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The Democrats and Republicans were both holding their conventions in Saratoga Springs. The WPU set up camp at the United States Hotel. They strung a 30’ banner across the hotel courtyard: “Women’s Political Union -- Votes for Women” and another one reading “Victory in 1915.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Once Whitman’s support & the GOP platform were assured, they displayed huge posters: “Republicans Declare for Woman Suffrage.” Imagine the bunting in purple, green, and white: Harriot’s group borrowed the colors of the radical British suffragettes who inspired her.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Charles Whitman’s support for suffrage isn’t what got him elected - that would become clear when the statewide suffrage referendum failed a year later. Rather, he won on his reputation for fighting corruption as Manhattan District Attorney, where he had challenged corrupt police.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Despite that, he served only four years. When women could finally vote in New York, they didn’t turn out for Whitman. He lost in 1918 to Alfred E. Smith, the up-and-coming Catholic Democrat who was buoyed by the growing political power of NYC immigrants, male and female. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Whitman’s son became a judge, and his grandson John became a banker. In 1974 John married a woman named Christie Todd, whose family was prominent in New Jersey Republican politics. Their first date was President Nixon’s inaugural ball. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Christine Todd Whitman was elected governor of New Jersey 79 years after her husband’s grandfather was elected to the same office in New York. For the record, @GovCTW endorsed Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.<br /><br />#suffrage100</span></p>
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1327067952001249281" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread</a>
November 12, 2020
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.
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1254971861160656896" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
04/27/2020
Haudenosaunee Confederacy
The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy is the oldest participatory democracy on earth, and a matriarchy. Their model of women voting & leading inspired 1st wave white feminists who lived near Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga & Seneca lands in 1800s NY.
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1167965323338731520" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
01/09/2019
<a href="https://www.haudenosauneeconfederacy.com/who-we-are/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><span>Haudenosaunee Confederacy</span></a>
Literacy tests
Great thread from @<a href="https://twitter.com/clancynewyork" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">clancynewyork</a> on the persistence of New York's literacy test for voting. It was introduced in 1923, as a wave of anti-immigrant fervor crested in the US, resulting in closing the borders for 40 years. Compare some states' voter ID & "exact match" laws today.Â
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Today, I watched video of a <a href="https://twitter.com/NYHistory?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NYHistory</a> event on women's suffrage. <a href="https://twitter.com/irin?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@irin</a> said New York State once had a literacy test.👀(That wasn't taught in my NYS schools.) The literacy test aimed to prevent voting by southern European immigrants. Instead, it disenfranchised Puerto Ricans. +</p>
— Eileen Clancy (@clancynewyork) <a href="https://twitter.com/clancynewyork/status/1234309457590571013?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 2, 2020</a></blockquote>
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1235912776645779460" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
06/03/2020
Losing New York, 1915
Dissecting the failed 1915 New York suffrage referendum is like reliving the 2016 election. It’s still too soon. But take a deep breath and let’s dive in . .<br /><br />Winning New York would require a three-step process: suffragists needed to pass a bill through the state Senate and the Assembly in 1913, pass the same bill in 1915, and then win a popular referendum with the men of the state. <br /><br />We really thought we had it. Harriot Stanton Blatch & Carrie Chapman Catt, two towering figures in suffrage politics, devoted themselves to winning. They undertook more than three years of meticulous planning, fundraising, lobbying in Albany, and organizing throughout the state. <br /><br />Carrie Chapman Catt had been focused on int’l suffrage for years, and now shifted her energy to NY. Catt & Harriot Stanton Blatch were oil & water. Catt liked total control; Blatch found Catt’s cautious conservatism enraging. They reached a chilly detente for the 1915 campaign. <br /><br />Fundraising began in 1912 with a ball for 2,000, at the accessible price of 50c per ticket. The next year they sold out the Armory, mixing hoi polloi with “shabby little cash girls, waltzing in shirt waists†-- NY Tribune. The campaign raised more than $4 million in today’s $$. <br /><br />Harriot Stanton Blatch spent 1913 and the winter of 1915 in Albany, shepherding the bill through with an army of lobbyists. When Sen. Elon Brown said that fewer than a dozen women in his district supported suffrage, activist Helen Todd arrived at his office trailed by hundreds. <br /><br />The bill passed both chambers in 1913; and again in 1915. In 1915 it passed the Assembly 113-0. It was time to go to the voters. <br /><br />Catt divided the state into 12 districts, and ran “suffrage schools†for organizers, who were assigned all the way down to the neighborhood level. Actions were organized with military precision. In addition to public meetings and leafleting, suffragists used new creative tactics. <br /><br />Huge crowds gathered on a sidewalk near St. Patrick’s Cathedral to watch a “voiceless speech†-- a woman standing in a store window, slowly turning placards on an easel. Blatch’s group parked a Votes for Women lunch wagon on Wall Street and gave soapbox speeches from May to Nov. <br /><br />They provided free child care at public events - which had the double benefit of capturing parents’ attention and demonstrating the kind of world women would make with their power.👇Suffolk County Fair, Long Island, 1914. <br /><br />They canvassed relentlessly. Catt estimated that they reached 60% of NYC voters directly. A caravan traveled the width of the state, from Montauk Point to Lake Erie, bearing a suffrage torch. Victory seemed within reach. <br /><br />But in November 1915, they lost the popular vote. Badly. Only 43% of the men in New York supported suffrage. All five boroughs of New York City voted against. Why? Well, sharing the ballot with an unpopular measure about a Constitutional Convention didn’t help. <br /><br />But the only concrete reason for such a resounding defeat was that most of the men in New York didn’t want women to vote. Carrie Chapman Catt began preparing immediately for a new referendum. Not Harriot. <br /><br />Harriot Stanton Blatch was done asking every man in each state if she could vote. From now on, she would devote herself to the Federal Amendment. #CenturyofStruggle #19thAmendmentÂ
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1287212992241840133" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
25/07/2020
Mrs. Zenger
Anna Zenger printed the NY Weekly Journal while her husband JohnPeter was jailed for libel in 1734. He was in for 9 months b/c he couldn't pay bail; his case is a landmark re:freedom to criticize gov't. Anna continued to run the print shop after he died. #EndCashBail #Suffrage100
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1169263912765837312" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
Newark, Albany, South Dakota
We are stuck more firmly in one place than ever, while talking easily with everywhere and anywhere. Ergo, an appreciation of three intensely place-specific works of suffrage public history that women are making. Reply w/more! <br /><br />NEWARK - Noelle Lorraine Williams still brings Newark history to life on Instagram every day. When I can cross the Hudson again I’m going to her “Radical Women" exhibit at the @<a href="https://twitter.com/NewarkLibrary" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NewarkLibrary</a>, which fuses voting rights past & present w/great art. <br /><br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Noelle does such amazing work as a scholar, artist, public historian, and activist! Check out my interview with her for <a href="https://twitter.com/QueerNewark?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@QueerNewark</a> & you can find her on Instagram: @black_abolitionists_newark <a href="https://t.co/vjXWp0JMSM">https://t.co/vjXWp0JMSM</a></p>
— Kristyn Scorsone (@ykristyn) <a href="https://twitter.com/ykristyn/status/1115300414130274310?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 8, 2019</a></blockquote>
<br /><br />ALBANY - @<a href="https://twitter.com/albanymuskrat" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">AlbanyMuskrat</a> Julie O’Connor <a href="https://friendsofalbanyhistory.wordpress.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">writes beautiful longform essays</a> 👇 And she reconstructed Albany suffrage history by tracking down every woman who voted in 1880s schoolboard elections AND those turned away--more than 150 white and Black women. <br /><br />SOUTH DAKOTA - The landscape is majestic and so is @<a href="https://twitter.com/LizAlmlie" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">LizAlmlie’s</a> website. <a href="https://twitter.com/LizAlmlie" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">SoDak's suffrage story in detail,</a> organized beautifully, with timeline, biographies, places, primary & secondary sources. And she made the art!
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1263318309992386560" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
20/05/2020
So fringe a cause, for so long
In the 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s, women’s rights was a marginal, oddball cause. Focusing on the mesmerizing women who demanded equality makes it jarring to zoom out & see how fringe they were. A college commemoration reminded me. Thread. @<a href="https://twitter.com/Cornell" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cornell</a> students,1883 <br /><br />Cornell’s Library created <a href="https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/suffrage/exhibition/introduction/index.html#modalClosed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">an elegant website</a> in 2017 to commemorate the New York state centennial. There's some beautiful stuff, but the material from students reminded me just how weird and counter-cultural suffrage was for most of the 19th century. <br /><br />Cornell was unusual in admitting women from the beginning - in theory, women of all races, though another @<a href="https://twitter.com/CornellRMC" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CornellRMC</a> exhibition describes <a href="https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/earlyblackwomen/introduction/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a belated, stingy welcome</a> for Jane Eleanor Datcher, class of 1890, and the handful of Black women after her. <br /><br />Women of all colors were a minority on campus until 2011, so maybe the antipathy of early students toward suffrage shouldn’t be a surprise. In 1880, in a graduating class of 71 men and 9 women, only 20 people expressed support - including 6 of the women. <br /><br />The exhibit curators went looking for records of women students in support, and found little. “[S]tudent suffrage groups left no records, and women rarely noted suffrage activities in yearbook entries.” All they could find were a few tepid references in letters home. <br /><br />When Lillie Devereux Blake came to Ithaca to speak in 1881, a female student wrote to her parents: “it is too near examinations to attend and aside from that I should be most afraid to go for fear the [men] students will make some fuss.” <br /><br />When New York debated a (losing) suffrage amendment in 1894, 300 signatures in support came from students and faculty of Cornell, which then had an enrollment of nearly 2,000. Interest increased after the turn of the century; by 1902 a Political Equality Club had formed. <br /><br />Nora Blatch, daughter of Harriot Stanton Blatch, granddaughter of ElizCadyStanton, graduated in 1905. She was the first US woman to get a degree in civil engineering, and the President of said club, natch.<br /><br />Things picked up after that, on campus and among locals. <br /><br />The 1915 (losing) referendum was bigger news in town than the 1894 attempt. Visit the site for more; it's great. <br /><br />This isn’t to say no one cared before 1900 - at Cornell and other universities, and in women’s clubs and in churches and synagogues and on factory floors. Of course some cared - that’s how we persevered so long. But the reminder that suffrage wasn’t popular in the 19th century - even among the women privileged, smart, and brave enough to go to college - offers a little perspective. #Suffrage100 #CenturyofStruggle May 29, 2020
Daily Suffragist
<a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1266171894270775296" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Original thread.</a>
28/05/2020