As we segue from Black History Month into Women’s History Month, there is a real need to continue to discuss blackness—specifically the erasure of black women from much of women’s history. The theme of Women’s History Month 2020 is ”Valiant Women of the Vote,” with an emphasis on the suffrage movement—a movement that is portrayed most often as white, and one whose history of racism against—and exclusion of—black women is still not common knowledge.
The first time I saw the banner of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC) portrayed above, I was intrigued. The slogan used by the movement was inspirational: “Lifting as we climb” embodies a commitment black women made to their sisters and brothers, crossing the lines of privilege between those who had received an education post-slavery and those who had not.
In recent years black feminists, activists, writers, and historians have raised the profile of women such as Ida B. Wells, and are attempting to correct some of the invented history of Sojourner Truth, who is still most well-known for the “Ain’t I a Woman” speech, which, in actuality, is a speech she did not give.
The speech we have all heard about was crafted years later by Frances Dana Gage, who was an active abolitionist and suffragist. Here’s what Truth supposedly did say; you can compare both versions here. Gage’s use of the speech patterns white people expected from a Southern black woman is very telling as Truth, born Isabella Baumfree, certainly didn’t deliver her remarks in Southern black vernacular. She was from the North, and spoke only upper-New York state Low Dutch until she was 9 years old.
I had to learn the “Ain’t I a Woman” speech when I was in grade school, and I have listened to many performances of it. Yet it wasn’t until fairly recently that I learned I had been taught a lie. Because I now live about 10 minutes away from where Isabella Baumfree was held in bondage (in Ulster County, New York), and because I was teaching at the State University of New York at New Paltz (where the library is named in her honor), I had more exposure to her detailed history than I would have had if I had lived and worked elsewhere.
The Sojourner Truth Project has recorded readings of what the original speech, presented at the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, on May 29, 1851, might have sounded like, spoken by Afro-Dutch speakers. Here’s one from 2017.
There are several more on the Project’s website.
***
What interests me the most about the women’s suffrage movement is how little we learn about those early black women’s groups that fought tirelessly to gain the ballot. I’ve addressed some of this in the past; however there is so much more to explore.
Though I taught women’s studies for more than a decade, none of the textbooks we used to cover the history of women’s suffrage included women like Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, who founded The Women’s Era, the first newspaper produced by black women and for black women. Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls published an extensive profile of Ruffin in January.
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin was born in 1842 in Boston, Massachusetts, the youngest of six children in her family. Her father was of African, Native American, Caribbean and French ancestry, and her mother was British. At the age of 15, Josephine married 21-year-old George Lewis Ruffin, who later became the first African American to graduate from Harvard Law School. Together, the couple were heavily involved in civic service during the Civil War, including by volunteering in the U.S. Sanitary Commission (precursor to the American Red Cross), and by founding the Kansas Relief Association, which sent money and clothes to former slaves who had fled west. George Ruffin died in 1886, and Josephine devoted the rest of her life to civil rights, women’s suffrage, and children’s education.
In 1890, Josephine started The Women’s Era — the first newspaper published by and for African American women. She undertook all editing and publishing of it, wrote an editorial for each issue, and recruited correspondents to contribute from around the country. The newspaper served as a vehicle to “document the achievements and showcase the strengths of African-American women,” and “enhanced their pride and confidence.” It included interviews with activists such Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and profiles of “Eminent Women,” including Harriet Tubman. Volumes 1, 2 and 3 of the newspaper have been digitized by Emory University, and can be accessed here.
A cursory search of Twitter turned up only a few Black History Month references to Ruffin this year. I’ll be monitoring coverage of black suffragists throughout Women’s History Month.
Another fascinating piece of this early history is a document known as ”The Letter,” which sparked the 1896 gathering of black women’s groups that formed the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. The NACWC’s website notes,
The Letter
In 1895 James W. Jacks, president of the Missouri Press Association, received a letter from Florence Balgarnie of the English Anti-Lynching League asking American journalists to help battle lynching. Jacks’ now infamous reply to her letter, attacked African Americans and specifically, black women. Jacks wrote that, “The Negroes in this country are wholly devoid of morality. They know nothing of it except as they learn by being caught for flagrant violations of law and punished therefor… They consider it no disgrace but rather an honor to be sent to prison and to wear striped clothes. The women are prostitutes and all are natural liars and thieves….Out of 200 in this vicinity it is doubtful if there are a dozen virtuous women of that number who are not daily thieving from the white people.”
The Founding of NACWC
Equivalent to the “shot heard round the world” triggering the American Revolution, the effect of James Jacks’ letter response to Florence Balgarnie’s solicitation of journalist support against lynching, catapulted black women into action. A national “Call to Confer” sent to women’s organizations of color was issued by Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, leader of Boston’s New Era Club.
Curious to find more details, I tracked down references to The Letter in a biography of Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, a black novelist, journalist, playwright, and an editor of The Colored American Magazine. Her biography by Lois Brown, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins: Black Daughter of the Revolution, was published in 2012, and notes that Hopkins was “nearing a personal and professional crossroads” when The Letter changed the landscape of activism for black women.
In the June 1895 issue of The Woman’s Era, Ruffin purposefully addressed the matter. In a column entitled “A Charge to Be Refuted,” she noted that “the letter of Mr. Jacks to Miss Balgarnie is a denouncement of the morality of colored women of America… and also a criticism of the peculiar ideas of virtue and morality held by everybody but the people of the south and west.” Jacks, she declared, was part of a “host of traducers who are so free in bringing the charge of immorality upon all colored women.”
The call to come together in Boston and organize was a key point in black women’s history. We should be aware that only two decades post-enslavement, the stereotyping of black women as whores and Jezebels (which continues to this day) was something that had to be resisted vociferously. While modern black activists frequently lampoon and deride “respectability politics,” the work of these women—to eradicate a history of portrayals as victims of rape and breeding farms, and of lewd and disparaging perceptions of black women—was necessary.
I am looking forward to Lifting as We Climb: Black Women’s Battle for the Ballot Box, by Evette Dionne, editor-in-chief of Bitch Media. Aimed at young adults, the soon-to-be-released book will hopefully help make up for the dearth of information on early black women’s activism. The publisher’s website describes the book:
Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Alice Paul. The Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls. The 1913 Women's March in D.C. When the epic story of the suffrage movement in the United States is told, the most familiar leaders, speakers at meetings, and participants in marches written about or pictured are generally white.
That's not the real story.
Women of color, especially African American women, were fighting for their right to vote and to be treated as full, equal citizens of the United States. Their battlefront wasn't just about gender. African American women had to deal with white abolitionist-suffragists who drew the line at sharing power with their black sisters. They had to overcome deep, exclusionary racial prejudices that were rife in the American suffrage movement. And they had to maintain their dignity--and safety--in a society that tried to keep them in its bottom ranks.
It is long past time that we lift up this history and the women who made it happen. Stay tuned for next Sunday’s exploration of black women’s activism for the vote.