Women's History - When Black suffrage and Women's suffrage Collided in the 19th Century

Dear friends,

Historically, woman suffragettes were usually abolitionists first. One such person who began as an abolitionist and later became a renowned speaker for women's rights was Susan B. Anthony. Yet, Anthony seemed to have questionable qualities regarding her feelings about human liberation. You see, suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were, in fact, vigorously opposed to Lincoln's version of the Emancipation Proclamation and the succeeding Constitutional amendments, because they would give only African American men - and no women - the right to vote. Even worse, much of her public life, at least at one point, was financed by a man, George Francis Train, a white supremacist ideologue and spokesman.

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had responded to what they considered to be a Republican "betrayal" by agreeing to share the lecture platform with a flamboyant Democrat, George Francis Train. An effective if eccentric speaker, Train scandalized abolitionists and suffragists alike by his frequent recourse to racial slurs and by his advocacy of woman suffrage as an alternative to Black suffrage. Despite mounting pressure from their fellow reformers, Anthony and Stanton refused to dissociate themselves from Train, the only man willing to provide them with consistent strategic and financial support. He not only took it upon himself to pay the two women's expenses when funds ran low, but also offered to bankroll Anthony's dream of a pro-suffrage journal in exchange for their continued presence on his return lecture tour to the East. In what seems like an obvious victory of expediency over principle, both women accepted the offer, insisting on their 'right to accept proffered aid without looking behind it for the motive.' It was not the last time they would have to engage in such a defense - (The Isabella Beecher Hooker Project, edited by Anne Throne Margolis)

G. Djata Bumpus