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What the Suffrage Movement Can Teach Us About Intersectionality
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Suffragists on April 22, 1913. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
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Two of the most famous names regarding the Woman’s Suffrage movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. While both Anthony and Stanton considered themselves abolitionists and had led anti-slavery campaigns, when the 15th amendment was introduced, they both campaigned against it. Anthony thought it would create an “aristocracy of sex” and once said, “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.” Stanton’s rejection of the 15th amendment was much more elitist and racist. She wrote, "American women of wealth, education, virtue and refinement, if you do not wish the lower orders of Chinese, Africans, Germans and Irish, with their low ideas of womanhood to make laws for you and your daughters ... demand that women too shall be represented in government."
Women of color were largely excluded from the suffrage movement, and often relegated to the back of marches and protests. In the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession, Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell refused and walked alongside the white women. At this same march, the women of the newly formed Delta Sigma Theta, "anxious but exhilarated," also refused to walk in the segregated section. Sojourner Truth combined calls for abolition with women’s rights, and famously delivered her extemporaneous speech later known as “Ain’t I a Woman.” Frances Ellen Watkins Harper also advocated for African American suffrage alongside women’s suffrage in one of her speeches, “We Are All Bound Up Together.” Zitkála-Šá (of the Yankton Dakota tribe, also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) was active in the women’s rights movement in the 1920s and ran a large voter registration drive among Native Americans. Excluding the stories of these women and many others yields an incomplete picture of the women’s movement and hinders us from understanding where we are today.
As with most systems and movements in our country, the history of prioritization of whiteness and white, middle-class issues continues in current feminist discourse. In Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot, Mikki Kendall argues meeting basic needs like quality education, food security, and safe neighborhoods are feminist issues largely overlooked: the focus is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few.
This month, take some time to learn about how intersectionality is important to the success of any social movement. And thank the woman – Kimberlé Crenshaw – who coined the term “intersectionality” in 1989. To move us all forward in the future, it is imperative to remember Together is Better.
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The Mothers of Gynecology
at the More Up Campus, Montgomery, Alabama
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Monument to 'Mothers of Gynecology' anarchalucybetsey.org
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The fifteen-foot installation “Mothers of Gynecology” is a profound and poignant monument to the three enslaved women – Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey – who were subjected to the inhumane experiments of J. Marion Sims, the so-called “father of gynecology.”
From the More Up website: “Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey were enslaved women from plantations in and around Montgomery, Alabama. With neither consent nor anesthesia, they were experimented on by Dr. J. Marion Sims in the 1840s. After publishing the results of his ‘success,’ Sims moved to New York to seek fame and fortune. Within a decade, he became known as the Father of Gynecology. By contrast, Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy fell into history. They changed the world, only to be forgotten by it. A 15-foot public monument will honor these women, tell their story, and shine a light on ongoing racial disparities in the healthcare industry today.”
Learn more about this powerful project and what the More Up Campus has planned for the future here.
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WHY DIDN'T I KNOW THAT?
Pauli Murray was an integral part of the labor movement, civil rights movement, and women’s rights movement, but she is often forgotten in the conversation surrounding these twentieth-century crusades. Murray was the first Black person to receive a JSD (Doctor of the Science of Laws) degree from Yale, one of the founders of the National Organization for Women, the first African American woman Episcopal priest, a teacher, writer, and poet.
Join Actress Becky Stone as she discusses her historical interpretation of The Most Influential Woman You’ve Never Heard Of: Pauli Murray via Zoom on Monday, March 28 at 6 pm CT. This event is sponsored by the Athens Chautauqua Society and is co-sponsored by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History-Athens Branch.
Space is limited. Register here.
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If you have any questions or would like to become more involved, send us an email!
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