ABSTRACT
These were the words of female suffrage supporter Elizabeth Cady Stanton at an address celebrating the American Centennial. Her assertion that ‘men of every race’ enjoyed the rights of full citizenship disguised the erosion of the rights of black men as the era of Reconstruction came to an end. The citizenship rights of all women were being debated as the parameters of Reconstruction were contested. The year before Stanton spoke, the Supreme Court ruled that the vote was not the right of citizens and as such female suffrage was not guaranteed by the Constitution. The intersection of racial and gender issues during the era of Reconstruction had a profound impact on the shape of female political life and the campaign for suffrage which culminated in the Nineteenth Amendment. Feminist scholars have, since the 1980s, increasingly placed the
female experience at the centre of historical research. Previously unheard voices and neglected events have been recovered in an effort which has enriched the study of the American past. A traditional feminist approach which seeks to protect women’s place in history by forging a common womanhood and protecting a female autonomy, however, fails to fully explain the position of black women. The homogeneity of female experience implicit in a traditional feminist perspective, which focusses on how gender has constructed that experience, fails to deal with the issue of racial identity. It is race and community that has provided a greater influence on black women’s identity than their position as females.2 An investigation of women’s history must embrace the significance of racial identity. This chapter
seeks to outline some of the ways in which black and white women attempted to exercise political influence and campaigned for the vote in the period 1865-1920.3 They sought to expand their rights as citizens of the United States. It is important to recognise at the outset, however, that simply focussing on the suffrage movement is to impose a EuroAmerican paradigm on the development of female political involvement.4 African-American women, and indeed their white counterparts, often conceived of political influence outside of the mainstream of the electoral system. Denied the vote during the Reconstruction period, women forged a new kind of political involvement in the Progressive era which brought traditional domestic concerns into the public arena. In so doing they helped prepare the ground for the eventual coming of votes for women. Persistent throughout these developments, however, was the reality that shared political concerns were compromised by the divisions of race. It was ‘tragically ironic’ the fact that activism by black and white women to expand their rights grew alongside significant racial dissonance.5
