A book full of angry black feminist op-eds and rants written by this black girl so keep your misogynoir to yourself ✨
i am not a teacher so please don't ask me teach you or educate you... google is free✨
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by Jasmine
It was March 3, 1913, one day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration. Over 5,000 women from across the country came together in Washington, D.C. with one goal in mind—suffrage. Everyone was welcome to participate in the Women's Suffrage Parade, everyone except black women. Months before the parade, black organizations expressed interest in marching. Alice Paul, the parade organizer, discouraged them from participating. Paul was fearful that white women would not want to march with black women, stating "As far as I can see, we must have a white procession, or a Negro procession, or no procession at all."
Eventually, she decided to allow black women in the parade under one condition: they march at the back. This compromise was not good enough for black suffragists like Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who refused to march in the parade unless "I can march under the Illinois banner."
On the day of the parade, Wells-Barnett was nowhere to be found until the Illinois procession marched down Pennsylvania Avenue. She stepped out of the crowd and into the front of the procession, refusing to accept segregation and forcing white women to see black women's suffrage as connected to women's suffrage.
The traditional version of the Women's Suffrage Movement has ignored the contributions of black women, pushing them to the back of the narrative. Early works written about the movement by feminist historians have suggested that black women were anti-women's rights or uninterested in voting, which is untrue. White women have been able to construct the history of the movement and determine the value of black women's participation and contributions. Their voices have been heard while black women as suffragists have been left invisible. The conversation about suffrage has surrounded white women and sexism without acknowledging the prominence of racism within the movement.
Although the women's movement of the nineteenth century led to women's suffrage, the Nineteenth Amendment was not a win for all women. By upholding white supremacy, appeasing southern suffragists, and ignoring the relationship of race and gender, the women's suffrage movement managed to become tainted with racism which contributed to the exclusion of black women. But, like Ida B. Wells-Barnett, many black women demanded to be seen as women who deserve the right to vote and dedicated their lives to black women's suffrage.
It took over seventy years for women to gain the right to vote. For white women, the Nineteenth Amendment meant they were no longer second class citizens but this was not the case for black women. When the amendment passed, black women saw the victory as an opportunity to reenfranchise black men, primarily in the south, whose vote had been suppressed through state laws such as the poll tax and literacy tests. This legalized discrimination impacted black women as well. Due to the efforts that prevented black people from voting, the Nineteenth Amendment granted black women suffrage on paper only.
Because of racism and prejudice, black women were intentionally as well as unconsciously excluded from the women's suffrage movement. One way white women managed to shut out black women was through upholding white supremacy. Often to gain support for suffrage white women would argue that because they are white, they are superior to black people and therefore should be able to vote. For example, in 1854, while addressing the New York Legislature, Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, "We are moral, virtuous, and intelligent, and in all respects quite equal to the proud white man, yet by your laws we are classed with idiots, lunatics and negroes." Also in 1869, Susan B. Anthony got into an argument with Frederick Douglass over the "Negro's Hour" at an AERA meeting. Douglass believed that black suffrage included black women and Anthony responded, "The old anti-slavery school says women must stand back and wait until the negroes shall be recognized. But we say, if you will not give the whole loaf of suffrage to the entire people, give it to the most intelligent first."Both Stanton and Anthony's use of the racial stereotype that black people were unintelligent played into white supremacy. They believed that their whiteness contributed to their intelligence which is why they should be enfranchised, not black people.
