Election of 1880
It’s debate night, so let’s spin the Wheel of Presidential Elections. And it lands on . . . 1880! Thread.<br /><br />James A. Garfield ran against Winfield Hancock. Not ringing a bell, huh? Union war hero, underminer of Reconstruction, and the Democrats’ best hope to retake the White House. <br /><br />The popular vote was very close, with 4.4 million men voting for each of them. But the popular vote doesn’t matter, as you may be aware. Garfield swept the Electoral College. <br /><br />Before the election, the National Woman Suffrage Association tried to get both candidates on the record about votes for women. Lillie Devereux Blake took a small delegation to visit General Hancock at home. They found him pleasantly well-versed in the issue and at least tepidly supportive. He told them that if Congress passed a suffrage bill for the District of Columbia, he wouldn’t veto it. (This was a big improvement over Horace Greely, the prior Democratic candidate, who was vehemently anti-suffrage.) <br /><br />Susan B Anthony called on Garfield at his home in Ohio.👇 He was cordial. She followed up in writing. “What we wish to ascertain is whether you, as president, would use your _official influence_ to secure to the women of the several States a _national guarantee_ of their right to a voice in the government on the same terms with men.†<br /><br />He responded by saying that she surely understood the Republicans were the party of liberty, but why must she be so pushy. She responded with a pretty fabulous letter rebuking the sad decline of the party of Lincoln. <br /><br />“...Since 1870, its congressional enactments, majority reports, Supreme Court decisions, and now its presidential platform, show a retrograde movement--not only for women, but for colored men--limiting the power of the national government in the protection of United States citizens against the injustice of the States, until what we gained by the sword is lost by political surrenders.†<br /><br />#suffrage100 #19thAmendmentÂ
Daily Suffragist
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Sept 29, 2020
Lesbian Erasure from the Centennial
We gotta talk about lesbians. Specifically, about lesbian erasure. Queer is cool, right? It’s 2020! ðŸ³ï¸â€ðŸŒˆðŸ³ï¸â€âš§ï¸etc., etc. <br /><br />So why is the lesbian reality of the suffrage movement barely part of the #19thAmendment centennial conversation? A thread. <br /><br />The movement for women’s liberation was run largely by unmarried women - some never married, some widowed. Why? Because marriage was a prison for women, legally and socially. Unmarried women were exponentially freer to do the work of organizing and building a national movement. <br /><br />Long-married leaders who raised multiple children - ElizCadyStanton, IdaBWells - are outliers in the suffrage pantheon. Most of the women who led the movement didn’t marry, didn’t have children, or were widowed early. Does that mean they were lesbians? Well, yes - many of them. <br /><br />First, the context: enlightened men were vanishingly rare - remember, in the 19th & early 20th centuries women were widely believed to be inferior and incapable. So a woman who wanted independence would rather not marry if she could afford it. <br /><br />Also, sex. @lillianfaderman makes the point that for women, penalties for heterosexual sex outside of marriage were extreme. So an unmarried woman who wanted an erotic life with someone besides herself was much safer finding it with women. <br /><br />These women wouldn’t have used the word lesbian. Nor would they likely have identified as “invertsâ€--the clinical forerunner to “homosexual.†But many lived in romantic partnerships with other women--relationships far more intimate than what we’d call “friends.†Some receipts… <br /><br />Susan B Anthony’s correspondence w/Anna Dickinson is flirty & direct. “Well, Anna Darling--I do wish I could take you in these strong arms of mine this very minute†& “I cannot bear to go off without another precious look into your face--my Soul.†There's a lot more. <br /><br />It didn't last. Years later, Susan said how much she envied the committed, devoted relationship her niece Lucy had w/Anna Howard Shaw - a relationship Susan knew was an intimate one. <br /><br />Only in her 70s did Susan come close to finding it, w/a married Chicago woman named Emily Gross. Susan wrote to friends of her “new lover†in Chicago--not a word she used for colleagues or admirers. Anna Shaw wrote in her diary: “I am so thankful for the new friend for Aunt Susan. How nice it is!†They were together for Susan’s last decade; Gross grieved her death deeply. <br /><br />Frances Willard preferred “Frank†w/intimates; like the others in this thread she hated "female" chores & rejected rigid gender roles as ridiculous. Ironically, her great accomplishment for suffrage was convincing conservative women that the vote would aid, not “unsex†them. She was so bluntly revealing about her love for the women she lived with - first Kate Jackson, then Anna Gordon - that some scholars say the relationships must have been chaste: if they were erotic she wouldn’t have revealed so much. I’m not convinced. <br /><br />Anna Howard Shaw & Lucy Anthony had a pretty conventional butch/femme home: Lucy did the dishes, Anna mowed the lawn and fixed things. Anna had affairs with other women in her travels, but their partnership lasted 30 yrs. <a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1252779160692498437" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lucy worked to memorialize her 👇</a><br /><br />Unlike the women above, Carrie Chapman Catt was married twice: her 1st husband died soon after they married, her second agreed to a prenup that promised her at least â…“ of the year away from him, working for suffrage. After he died, Catt & Mollie Hay lived together 23 years. Catt presented a very intentional public narrative about her double widowhood, but in the movement Mollie was recognized as her spouse. When Mollie died, Catt was widowed a 3rd time. She had a heart attack. She survived and lived years more. They are buried under a shared stone.<br /><br />There were Black lesbian suffragists always, like Alice Dunbar-Nelson & Angelina Weld Grimké. Notably, many leading Black women were married briefly or not at all, like Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Nannie Helen Burroughs & Mary McLeod Bethune. <br /><br />Why such a deep closet? The new PBS documentary didn’t give a whiff of queerness. There was one @NYTimes piece by @Maya_Salam + one @WomensVote100 post by @WendyLRouse - both good ones! - but in a year of commemoration I can’t name much else. <br /><br />We know A LOT about the private lives of Famous Suffragists. And given how much we know, the absence of centennial acknowledgment that these women lived queer lives is … gaping. <br /><br />Thx @lillianfaderman for finding the evidence. #suffrage100
Daily Suffragist
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Sept 10, 2020
Racist Propaganda
What's a Rochester suffragist from Susan B Anthony's day doing on a racist anti-suffrage leaflet in Virginia circa 1920? Read on . . . <br /><br />Julie O’Connor <a href="https://twitter.com/albanymuskrat" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@AlbanyMuskrat</a> recently called my attention to Hester Jeffrey, a prominent African American suffragist and clubwoman in western NY. Originally from Boston, Hester moved to Rochester in 1891 and quickly expanded political life for women in her new city. <br /><br />She held leadership positions in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union & the Needlework Guild of America. After Frederick Douglass died she was appointed to his Monument Committee. She sponsored scholarships for Black women at what’s now Rochester Inst. of Technology. <a href="https://twitter.com/RITtigers" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@RITtigers</a> <br /><br />Rosalyn Terborg-Penn describes Hester as active across networks of Black club women and white suffragists. She was president of the New York Federation of Colored Women, and she represented the Federation at the New York Woman Suffrage Association convention in 1905.<br /><br />In 1902, when New York women could vote in school board elections but nothing else, Hester Jeffrey founded the Susan B Anthony Club. The group organized Black women for charity work and suffrage. SusanB, of course, was the most famous woman in Rochester, and Hester knew her well. <br /><br />When Susan B died in 1906, Hester Jeffrey gave a eulogy alongside local politicians and suffrage leaders Anna Howard Shaw & Carrie Chapman Catt. <br /><br />Speaking on behalf of “the colored people of Rochester...the colored churches in this city, the National and State Federations of Colored Women, the federated clubs of the association†she expressed sorrow at the loss of a “friend for many years†and pledged that the members of the Club would “devote our time and energies to the work thou has left us to do.†<br /><br />Hester Jeffrey led the creation of the first memorial to Susan B, a stained glass window at Rochester’s Memorial A.M.E. Zion church, installed in 1907. (When the church moved in the 1970s, I believe they took the window to their new home - along with one of Harriet Tubman.) <br /><br />I’d been thinking about Hester for a few days when I opened Terborg-Penn’s book to look for more. I was startled to see the familiar face of Hester Jeffrey hijacked onto anti-suffragist propaganda. 👆The flyer is unhinged; it seems to argue that suffrage leads to race-mixing. <br /><br />Its author was James Callaway, a columnist for the Macon (GA) Daily Telegraph. In 1918 he wrote a screed against the “Susan B Anthony Amendment†that accused Anthony, along with Carrie Chapman Catt and Anna Howard Shaw of, well, having Black friends. Exhibit A was Hester Jeffrey. <br /><br />Callaway also named Frederick Douglass, Robert Purvis, and Booker T. Washington as friends of Susan B's - and by association, the living suffrage leaders. <br /><br />Of course, this is weird and more than a little ironic. <br /><br />Susan B and those men were long dead; Catt and Shaw were hardly integrationists. (They were lesbians, though - could that be what Callaway was insinuating by “immediate women friendsâ€?) <br /><br />But racism doesn’t make sense. <br /><br />Terborg-Penn explains that the closer a federal suffrage bill came to passing, the harder white supremacists worked to sabotage it. Anti-suffragists took Callaway’s article & turned it into a leaflet they used against Carrie Catt when she campaigned for ratification in Virginia. <br /><br />And that’s how Hester Jeffrey, suffragist and clubwoman of Rochester - and by 1920 a full voter in New York state - ended up on a flyer in Virginia. #BlackSuffragists #CenturyofStruggle #19thAmendment <br /><br />Correction and more! Susan Goodier's essay says that after Hester was widowed in 1914, she moved back to Boston to live with her sister. She died in 1934.Â
Daily Suffragist
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14/07/2020
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July 4, 1876
One of the myths of the suffrage story is that nothing radical or confrontational happened before 1913. Not so. <br /><br />On July 4, 1876, at the national Centennial celebration in Philadelphia, suffragists stormed the stage. <br /><br />Thread. <br /><br />They had asked for a place on the official program for the dispossessed half of the citizenry. The chairman refused: the event program was set, he said, and besides, “We propose to celebrate what we have done in the past hundred years, not what we have failed to do.†<br /><br />They asked for seats for the National Woman’s Suffrage Assoc. and were refused because “only government officials were invited.†<br /><br />DC suffragist Sara Spencer replied: “We are aware that your programme is published, your speakers engaged, your entire arrangements decided upon, without consulting with the women of the United States; for that very reason we desire to enter our protest.†<br /><br />Susan B Anthony wrangled press credentials via her brother’s newspaper. Matilda Joslyn Gage, Lillie Devereaux Blake, Phoebe Couzins & Sara Spencer also found tickets. <br /><br />They had been planning for the Centennial for months, from an office on Chestnut Street that Anthony had leased -- as an unmarried woman she was the only one in the group who could sign the contract. <br /><br />From that office Matilda Joslyn Gage drafted a Declaration of Rights. <br /><br />Not a Declaration of Sentiments, as the 1848 Seneca Falls manifesto was called, but Rights. Plus Articles of Impeachment of the all-male government. <br /><br />Sara Spencer calligraphed a grand version for presentation to the government, signed by the National's leadership.<br /><br />They printed thousands of copies of the text for distribution. 👇(from <a href="https://twitter.com/smithsoniannpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@smithsoniannpg</a> via Ann Lewis Collection) <br /><br />On July 4, 1876, the official program commenced in Philadelphia. It was unbearably hot. <br /><br />The women hadn’t identified the precise cue for their action, but as Richard Henry Lee of Virginia read the 1776 Declaration of Independence, Susan B Anthony knew the moment had arrived. <br /><br />Lee, a Confederate veteran, was a direct descendant of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. A traitor to his country was welcome and honored at the Centennial, but not women who had campaigned ceaselessly for the Union. <br /><br />“Now is our time,†Anthony announced. <br /><br />They walked boldly down the center aisle, ascended the stage, and handed a 3-foot scroll wrapped in ribbons to Vice President Thomas Ferry. <br /><br />“I present to you a Declaration of Rights from the women citizens of the United States," said Anthony. He bowed and accepted the scroll. <br /><br />The women turned, descended the rostrum, and as they made their way through the crowd they handed out printed copies of the Declaration of Rights. Men stood on their chairs to grasp for them. <br /><br />The emcee cried “Order! Order!†and begged the conductor to strike up the band. <br /><br />A crowd gathered outside the main event as Susan B stood in the shadow of a statue of George Washington and read the entire document aloud. Then the suffragists made their way to a nearby church, where the pews were packed and the speeches continued for five hours. <br /><br />The day before, the women had asked one last time for a place on the program. In refusing again, the chairman of the Centennial presciently noted that if the women spoke, “It would be the event of the day--the topic of discussion to the exclusion of all else.†<br /><br />The New York Tribune called their stunt "A very discourteous interruption; it prefigures new forms of violence and disregard of order which may accompany the participation of women in active partisan politics.†🔥🔥🔥 <br /><br />The St. Louis Dispatch of July 13, 1876 was more sympathetic: “If perseverance is to be awarded, the agitators of the woman question will yet carry off the prize they seek. Death alone can silence such women as Susan B. Anthony and Cady Stanton... <br /><br />"...their teachings will live after them and unite others of their sex into strong bands of sisterhood in a common cause. <br /><br />"It is safe to say, if events march on in the same direction they have since the calling of the first National Woman’s Convention, another centennial will see woman in the halls of legislation throughout the land, and so far as we are concerned we have no objection, so long as she behaves herself.â€
Daily Suffragist
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04/07/2020
We need a Watching Committee
"One reason why so little has been done by Congress is because none of us has remained here to watch our employees up at the Capitol. Nobody ever gets anything done by Congress or by a State Legislature except by having some one on hand to look out for it. <br /><br />"We need a Watching Committee. The women can not expect to get as much done as the railroads, the trusts, the corporations and all the great moneyed concerns. They keep hundreds of agents at the national Capital to further their interests. <br /><br />We have no one here, and yet we expect to get something done, although we labor under the additional disadvantage of having no ballots to use as a reward or punishment." --Susan B Anthony, February 1900
Daily Suffragist
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21/05/2020
Don't get in bed with racists
At the turn of the century, leading white suffragists deluded themselves into thinking that colluding with racists would help their cause. <br /><br />Spoiler alert: it didn’t.<br /><br />Thread. <br /><br />The new generation of suffrage leaders - with the blessing of the old guard - fantasized that they could break new ground in the south. Western state victories had petered out, and they’d suffered painful losses in NY & Calif. <br /><br />Maybe southern white men would support the cause... <br /><br />...though they never had before. Maybe women could expand local suffrage, add a state or two, and build support for a federal amdt. <br /><br />How? By appealing to white solidarity. Southern men might be willing to support votes for women IF only “educated” (read: white) women could vote. <br /><br />State leaders like Laura Clay of Kentucky and Kate Gordon of Louisiana pushed this idea. (More TK on their eye-popping legacy.) <br /><br />ElizCadyStanton and Susan B Anthony approved it. <br /><br />Stanton & Anthony’s successors, Carrie Chapman Catt & Anna Howard Shaw, thought it was a good idea.<br /><br />At the NAWSA conference in Atlanta, the one where they cheered for the President of the Confederacy, Catt said: “There is a race problem everywhere. In the North and the West, it is the problem of the illiterate immigrant; in the South it is the problem of the illiterate negro. <br /><br />"The solution of the race problem is the same everywhere, the enfranchisement of women with an educational qualification.” <br /><br />This wasn’t a brand new idea. Stanton had been sympathetic to it a long time, and she wasn’t alone. Way back in 1867, Lucy Stone’s husband Henry Blackwell addressed a broadside to the leaders of the former slave-holding states: “Your four millions of Southern white women will counterbalance your four millions of negro men and women, and thus the political supremacy of your white race will remain unchanged.” <br /><br />Yup, the same Henry Blackwell who co-founded the American Woman Suffrage Assoc, the faction that supported the 15th Amdt. For supporting voting rights for Black men, Stone & Blackwell have been awarded undeserved anti-racist cred. <br /><br />Tomorrow:Jim Crow doesn’t need help from a girl.
Daily Suffragist
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20/04/2020
At the turn of the century
Doldrums: a state or period of inactivity, stagnation, or depression. Or, the women’s suffrage movement at the turn of the 20th century. Of course, it didn’t feel that way at the time. 🧵 <br /><br />By the end of the 19th century, the movement had unified into the National American Woman Suffrage Association. It was a very conservative, very white organization - but its leaders, and other suffragists who weren’t welcome in its ranks - were working hard for the vote. <br /><br />Still, as the century came to an end, the aging lions were worried. <a href="https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2014/julyaugust/feature/old-friends-elizabeth-cady-stanton-and-susan-b-anthony-made-histo" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Katy June-Friesen describes</a> ElizCadyStanton & Susan B Anthony’s fear that the young women in the movement didn’t appreciate how easily things could regress. <br /><br />Women had made strides in the professions, some Western states had full voting rights, many more had school board suffrage. But success moved women from a joke to a threat. New attempts to bar women from public and private employment began to appear. <br /><br />“The Chicago and Northwestern Railroad adopted a new policy of “promoting from within,†and, to avoid having women in management, fired many female employees.†The American Federation of Labor entertained a resolution calling on Congress to bar women from government jobs.<br /><br />It didn’t pass, but it was worrying--esp coming from a historical ally. Segregation hardened. African-American women were at double risk as always. “The old Slave Ocrats are bound to push out every man & woman of color from the enjoyment of civil rights,†Anthony wrote Stanton.<br /><br />As the 19th century came to an end, the road had been so very long. There was so much further to go. #Suffrage100 #VotesforWomen <br /><br /><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">Thank you <a href="https://twitter.com/StephenJAdams2" dir="ltr" class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-901oao css-16my406 r-1n1174f r-1loqt21 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">@StephenJAdams2 </a></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-1qd0xha r-ad9z0x r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">for sending me the piece!</span>
Daily Suffragist
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14/04/2020
The Food
One of the hardships of suffragists’ life on the road? Lousy food. This @<a href="https://twitter.com/NPRFood" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NPRFood</a> piece <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/03/08/591633331/on-the-road-to-womens-rights-susan-b-anthony-stomached-plenty-of-bad-food" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">focused on Susan B,</a> though it would apply to any of the 100s of women who traveled 1000s of miles, year after year, to talk to men about why we were citizens.
Daily Suffragist
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28/03/2020
South Dakota
South Dakota became a state in 1899. Its motto: “Under God the People Rule.” National suffrage leaders converged on the state immediately to campaign for a doomed suffrage amendment. Its motto: “Women Are People.” A #StateOfTheWeek thread <br /><br />White women in the Dakotas had sought the vote since at least 1883, but the territorial legislature worried it might hurt their chance for statehood. When North & South Dakota were admitted to the union, neither Native men nor any woman could vote. <br /><br />Eleanor Flexner summarizes: ]“The South Dakota campaign in 1890 was one of the most rigorous that suffrage workers ever endured -- blazing hot all summer, while the 75-yo Susan B Anthony and the veteran Henry Blackwell (a mere 65) toured the state, and freezing cold during Mrs. Catt’s tour in the fall. <br /><br />“In addition, living conditions were ‘primitive,’ and all the speakers had to cover immense distances. The decision for the newly united suffrage association to enter the campaign had hinged on pledges of support from farm and labor organizations." <br /><br />But... “when the campaign was already under way, the Knights of Labor and the Farmers Alliance launched a 3rd party, which refused to encumber itself with the controversial issue of votes for women. <br /><br />"The outcome was a defeat of almost 2-to-1, after a murderous campaign: “Mrs. Catt came down with typhoid fever immediately afterward and very nearly died, and when Miss Anthony returned to her home in Rochester, her sister Mary commented that for the first time she realized that Susan was growing old.” <br /><br />A referendum the same day to enfranchise Native men failed too. The massacre at Wounded Knee took place two months later. #StateOfTheWeek #CenturyofStruggle
Daily Suffragist
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27/03/2020
Failure is impossible
When Susan B Anthony was born in 1820, life expectancy for men was 41 yrs. Life expectancy for women was zero. Nothing beyond domestic or menial labor was expected of us. We were to have no public life at all. No serious education, no skilled profession, no politics, no property. <br /><br />Activist @<a href="https://twitter.com/deray" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">deray</a> Mckesson says the challenge for progressives is that we must imagine a world we've never seen. Conservatives just say retrench, turn back to the way things were. Dreaming a different world, convincing others it is attainable is orders of magnitude more difficult. <br /><br />Susan Brownell Anthony dreamed that world and insisted it could happen. Insisted, despite repeated failures, that failure was impossible. Her flaws are ours to reckon with, but her impact is indelible. Happy birthday, Susan B. #Suffrage100
Daily Suffragist
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15/02/2020