Agrégation Anglais 2022. Le droit de vote des femmes aux Etats-Unis, 1776-1965

collectif, Garbaye Linda

• Éditeur: Editions Ellipses
• Année: 2021
• ISBN:
  9782340060357
• Sujet: Éducation
• Sous-sujet: Développement professionnel

Ouvrage de préparation au concours de l'Agrégation.

African American women’s struggle for woman suffrage (1890-1920)

Élise Vallier-Mathieu

Obtaining the right to vote proved essential for many African American women activists. At the turn of the century, a period marked by tense racial relations and the disenfranchisement of black male voters in the South, black suffragists devoted tremendous energy to support woman suffrage by working actively within their clubs and associations. They published many articles and essays in which they hammered home that the franchise was paramount to ensure the advancement of the community.1

Historical period and corpus

This article explores the various ways in which black suffragists supported woman suffrage between the early 1890s and the early 1920s. This work examines both the intellectual work and the field work these women undertook at the time to promote woman suffrage. Firstly, it examines various newspaper articles, essays and speeches written by African American women activists such as Mary Church Terrell, Fannie Barrier Williams, Mary Talbert or Adella Hunt Logan; secondly, it explores some of the field work undertaken by women such as Mary Church Terrell in Washington D.C., Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Fannie Barrier Williams in Chicago, and Charlotte Hawkins Brown in the South. These women belonged to what Rosalyn Terborg-Penn had identified as the third generation of suffragists in her monograph African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote: 1850-1920. These college-trained women often came from northern and southern middle-class families.2 Most women of this study published articles in prominent newspapers such as The Woman’s Era and later in the National Association’s Notes,3 the official organs of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACW), The Crisis, the official organ of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and other African American publications such as the Colored American Magazine, and The Voice of the Negro.4 The work accomplished by these journalists enabled them to disseminate their ideas about women’s rights in the entire country.

A lifelong involvement in favor of woman suffrage

Most women of this study had developed a feminist consciousness very early in their lives and were lifelong supporters of woman suffrage. Many praised early feminists and abolitionists such as Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper or Mary Ann Shadd Cary. Many particularly deeply admired Susan B. Anthony. For example, Fannie Barrier Williams deeply admired Susan B. Anthony for her fight for racial and gender equality. When Anthony died in March 1906 at the age of 86, Williams paid a vibrant tribute to this feminist figure.5 Likewise, Ida B. Wells-Barnett held Susan B. Anthony in high esteem as well. She considered her as a mentor as well. Grateful for her supervision and guidance, she praised this motherly figure whom she portrayed as an open-minded, tolerant and curious woman.6 Mary Church Terrell also praised Susan B. Anthony’s work. She personally met Anthony when she was invited to speak in Rochester, New York, and recalled years later that her visit had been a “rare and delightful experience”.7

Mary Church Terrell is undoubtedly the most famous suffragist of this group of women. She asserted in her autobiography that she had always been convinced that women should have the right to vote: “I cannot recall a period in my life, since I heard the subject discussed for the first time as a very young girl, that I did not believe in woman suffrage with all my heart”.8 Terrell testified in her writing that supporting woman suffrage was not an easy task at the turn of the century: “In the early 1890s it required a great deal of courage for a woman publicly to acknowledge before an audience that she believed in suffrage for her sex when she knew the majority did not”, stressing that she had to “force [her]self to stand up, although it was hard for [her] to do so”.9 A fervent supporter of the franchise, in “The Justice of Woman Suffrage” (1912), Terrell was stunned by the fact that African Americans could actually oppose woman suffrage. For her, such positions were inconceivable: “It is queer and curious enough to hear an intelligent colored woman argue against granting suffrage to her sex, but for an intelligent colored man to oppose woman suffrage is the most preposterous and ridiculous thing in the world”.10 In the same article, she targeted black men more specifically, pointing out that she could not comprehend how African American men—who constantly fell victims to racial discrimination in their country and were disenfranchised in the South—could actually support discriminatory practices against any other group. She explained that by denying women the right to vote on account of sex, black men were discriminating women of their own group—who had previously helped them secure their rights—and were therefore guilty of the same sin as whites—who denied them the franchise on account of color: “What could be more absurd than to see one group of human beings who are denied rights which they are trying to secure for themselves working to prevent another group from obtaining the same rights?”11 She took the same stance three years later: “Nothing could be more inconsistent than that colored people should use their influence against granting the ballot to women if they believe that colored men should enjoy this right which citizenship confers”.12 Terrell wished that all men of African descent come to their senses and support woman suffrage. Other suffragists such as Adella Hunt Logan thought that women should not be denied the franchise simply because “many” women opposed it and wrote: “It is claimed by some that women do not want to vote. Many do not. A great many do. The elective franchise has not been made compulsory for men, neither should it be for women”.13

Part 1 – Writing and lecturing

Soon after the ratification of the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1870, black women got involved in the fight for woman suffrage and kept on fighting for it until the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in the summer of 1920. One of the strategies which African American women suffragists adopted to convince African Americans of the necessity of the franchise was to communicate. They consequently devoted tremendou...

Table des matières

• Couverture
• Page de titre
• Page de copyright
• Introduction
• The issue of women’s voting rights and practice in early America
• Sphère publique et sphère privée : suffrage féminin, genre et « culte de la domesticité »
• The other “unfinished revolution”? The struggle for women’s suffrage in the aftermath of the American Civil War
• The Supreme Court and women’s enfranchisement
• “Fighting this Feminist disease”: the opposition to women’s suffrage from the Reconstruction to the 1920s
• African American women’s struggle for woman suffrage (1890-1920)
• Native American women’s struggle for the right to vote
• Black women’s struggle for the right to vote in the South in the 1960s
• Ont contribué à l'ouvrage