The Rollin sisters of South Carolina
Massachusetts wasn’t a surprising place for Black women to participate in the American Woman Suffrage Assoc. - but South Carolina is less obvious. <br /><br />But Black men voted in the state even before the 15th Amdt, and as a result Black women had access to some political power. Thread.<br /><br />Frances, Kate, Louisa & Charlotte “Lottie” Rollin were African-American sisters pushing for women’s suffrage. Louisa spoke from the floor of the South Carolina state legislature in 1869; Frances’ husband argued for women’s votes at the SC Constitutional Convention of 1868. Lottie was a delegate to the SC chapter of AWSA: an integrated, mixed-sex group. <br /><br />In 1870, she addressed them in Charleston: “We ask suffrage not as a favor, not as a privilege, but as a right based on the ground that we are human beings, and as such entitled to all human rights.” <br /><br />I can’t find any image of the Rollin sisters. Instead, SC Rep. Robert Elliott advocating the Civil Rights Act of 1874. “When federal troops were withdrawn from So. Car. in 1877, Elliott was forced from office. He died in poverty on August 9, 1884 at the age of 41.” @<a href="https://twitter.com/ZinnEdProject" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ZinnEdProject</a>
Daily Suffragist
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16/11/2019
https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/rollin-sisters/
The Nathan Sisters
Two sisters were among New York’s most prominent society women at the turn of the last century…one a vigorous suffragist, the other an equally committed anti-suffragist. <br /><br />Guess which one founded @<a href="https://twitter.com/BarnardCollege" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BarnardCollege</a>? <br /><br />Maud Nathan and Annie Nathan Meyer descended from an illustrious Sephardi Jewish family with roots dating to before the American Revolution. Benjamin Cardozo and Emma Lazarus were cousins. <br /><br />Maud and Annie’s childhood was chaotic, but they both married wealthy men they liked--and settled into lives as upper-class, society matrons - dues-paying members of the Daughters of the American Revolution. <br /><br />But they were both restless, and both radical. We’ll meet Maud Nathan today; Annie Nathan Meyer tomorrow. <br /><br />Maud’s life revolved around society galas and summers in Saratoga Springs - until her only child died at 8 years old. <br /><br />Her friend Josephine Shaw Lowell, a founder of the New York Consumers League, urged Maud to direct her grief into supporting working women. <br /><br />By 1897 Maud was president of the NY Consumers League, a post she held for 30 years. The League worked to improve working conditions and enlist consumers in taking responsibility for the conditions in factories and stores. <br /><br />Maud scandalized her family by embracing suffrage. <br /><br />She even defended the radical tactics the Pankhursts were using in the UK. She noted: “While the suffragettes were quiet and well behaved, members of the House of Commons paid no attention to them...†<br /><br />Here is Maud in 1913 at the Intl Suffrage Convention in Budapest.<br /><br />Her husband Frederick shared her convictions, co-founding the Men’s League for Equal Suffrage. Together they marched down 5th Avenue--pretty shocking for their class--and attended suffrage conventions. He was undeterred when newspapers snidely referred to him as Mr. Maud Nathan. <br /><br />After he died, Maud spent 25 years with her partner Corinne Johnson.ðŸ³ï¸â€ðŸŒˆThey bought a house in Litchfield, Conn., started a community action group and supported the local schools. <br /><br />Meanwhile, Annie continued her own activism - radical and contradictory in many ways. Stay tuned!Â
Daily Suffragist
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10/04/2020
No Taxation Without Representation
No taxation without representation. Among the women who refused to pay taxes in whose levy and use they had no say are: <br /><br />Lucy Stone, New Jersey 1858 <br /><br />Abby & Julia Smith, Conn. 1869-1876 <br /><br />Dr. Clemence Lozier, New York, 1873 <br /><br />Abby Kelley Foster, Mass. 1872-1879 <br /><br /><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Great thread. Though true also that in 19th cent we moved away from a conception of voting rights based on taxation, to one based on (usually white, always male) citizenship, right? Thinking of NJ before 1807, when property-owning (therefore taxpaying) women could vote</p>
— Jennifer Schuessler (@jennyschuessler) <a href="https://twitter.com/jennyschuessler/status/1250820737226678274?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 16, 2020</a></blockquote>
<br /><br />@jennyschuessler Kerber would say yes. In the Revolutionary era, taxation and representation were so twinned that John Adams thought poor people were ripe for manipulation. ("Too poor to have a will of their own.") She says by the 1840s most states had moved to universal white male suffrage. <br /><br />Post-13th/14th/15th Amendments, the explicit debate about whether women were citizens surely motivated some of these women. Lucy Stone was ahead of her time, but the other feminist tax resisters are around the period of the New Departure civil disobedience strategy.
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15/04/2020
Maud Nathan's sister, Annie Nathan Meyer
I was prepared to hate Annie Nathan Meyer because of her vehement anti-suffrage views. But it’s hard to hate a woman whose autobiography, published posthumously, is called “It’s Been Fun.” <br /><br />Annie Nathan Meyer founded @<a href="https://twitter.com/BarnardCollege" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BarnardCollege</a> in 1889. Women couldn’t study at @<a href="https://twitter.com/Columbia" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Columbia</a> or anywhere in the city. She raised support for the college by appealing to New Yorkers’ chauvinism - Boston & Philadelphia already had liberal arts colleges for women. <br /><br />Unlike her older sister Maud (see yesterday), Annie had no formal education. While Maud and their brothers went to school, their mother kept Annie at home for company. Annie educated herself, reading Margaret Fuller, George Eliot & Elizabeth Barrett Browning. <br /><br />Annie became an accomplished author of nonfiction, fiction, plays, and many effective letters to the editor. She was a progressive in many ways, especially in her commitment to African-American rights. The NAACP called on her to broker Black/Jewish conflicts. <br /><br />She quit the DAR because they supported segregation. She was instrumental in making Zora Neale Hurston the first Black student at @BarnardCollege, and they became genuinely close friends. Hurston dedicated “Mules and Men” to her. <br /><br />Somehow this champion of women’s education, a public and professional woman her entire life, didn’t think women should vote. Her anti-suffrage views are odious. She argued that women’s primary obligations were domestic, and voting would inevitably corrupt domesticity. <br /><br />She wrote a polemical, never-produced play called The Dominant Sex, in which the protagonist, a suffragist and clubwoman, “neglects her home and child and shows nothing but icy contempt for her husband.” <br /><br />The only explanations historians offer for her persistent hostility are (a) contempt for some suffragists’ overblown claims that women’s votes would cure all social ills, and (b) sibling rivalry. <br /><br />The public enjoyed the spectacle of the sisters at odds, noting gleefully when Annie was invited to a suffrage luncheon at which Maud was to give the keynote. The New Republic published their dueling letters to the editor for decades. They both lived long lives full of accomplishment. Though Annie felt unappreciated by Barnard in her lifetime, today the @BarnardCollege website cites her as the founder--though it doesn’t mention her anti-suffragism. <br /><br />For more, read <a href="https://barnard.edu/magazine/winter-2015/sisters-house-divided" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Louise Bernikow's thoughtful compariso</a>n of the sisters for Barnard’s alumnae magazine. #Suffrage100 #HappyPassover
Daily Suffragist
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12/04/2020
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>
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