The Odd Couple

Our daughters know everything about their bodies and their selves. What they don't know is what it took to win them their rights.  This is why I started this blog.  I am the administrator of Ovaries for Obama and I have been focused on its theme “Looking back, moving forward.”  In my fourth blog I would like to introduce you to a remarkable friendship between two extraordinary women, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

 

In 1848, a married woman had no right to property (in fact, they WERE the property), no right to sign contracts, no right to the custody of her children, no right to divorce, and no right to serve on a jury.  Without a woman’s right to vote, none of this was going to change.

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton met in 1851 in Seneca Falls. Elizabeth wrote of that occasion:

How well I remember the day! George Thompson and William Lloyd Garrison having announced an anti-slavery meeting in Seneca Falls, Miss Anthony came to attend it. These gentlemen were my guests. Walking home after the adjournment, we met Mrs. Bloomer and Miss Anthony, on the corner of the street, waiting to greet us. There she stood, with her good earnest face and genial smile, dress in gray delaine, hat and all the same color, relieved with pale blue ribbons, the perfection of neatness and sobriety. I liked her thoroughly, and why Id did not at once invite her home with me to dinner I do not know.

Both Stanton and Anthony addressed various issues pertaining to women beyond voting rights. Elizabeth’s concerns included women's parental and custody rights, property rights, employment and income rights, divorce laws, the economic health of the family, and birth control (which included the right for a woman to refuse sex from her husband).    Susan, who didn’t have any children, was the labor activist, helping to organize the Workingwomen’s Association.  She was a Temperance worker, making her first public speech in 1848 at a Daughter of Temperance supper.  Because of this, Susan and Elizabeth found a common resolve to use their lives to gain women the right to vote.  

Elizabeth was four years Susan's senior, and unlike her single colleague, she was married. They soon became the odd couple of the women's rights movement.  Stanton, born into wealth, the short, stout, spitfire of a mother of seven and had a flair for writing; Anthony, the spinster, the slender and serious half, who agonized over putting words on paper but so intent on her goals to speak them. Stanton, the outspoken religious liberal who eventually translated the Bible and wrote The Woman’s Bible often publicly and fiercely criticized Stanton, who was born a Quaker before joining the Unitarian Church, for associating herself with women who were orthodox in their religion.  But, underneath Stanton's white curls and Anthony's gray bun combined two brains in search of one goal: women's rights to vote. For more than 50 years they fought together, maintaining an excellent relationship that survived great distances and more than the occasional heated arguments.  Henry Stanton, Elizabeth’s husband, summarized the pair: "[Elizabeth] stirs up Susan, and she stirs the world." 

In 1866, Elizabeth and Susan founded the American Equal Rights Association. In 1868 they founded the Rochester newspaper The Revolution. Its masthead read, "Men their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less."

Stanton was the free thinker, often pushing for more radical views.  She felt like a “caged lion” with seven children, the last being born when she was forty-four, and she seems to vent by writing.  Her thinking and writing fueled Anthony’s countless speeches throughout the country.  It was Anthony who rented the halls, built the coalition, and faced the often angry crowds. 

Elizabeth and Susan’s first legislative victory came in 1860, when the New York State Legislature passed the Married Woman's Property Act.   It gave a wife the right to keep her earnings, buy her own property, share custody of her children, and sue in a court of law. Women in other states began pressuring their legislatures to pass similar measures. The following year, the Civil War began.

Stanton persuaded Anthony, against her better judgment, to postpone their next convention and halt their activities until after the war, assuming that if women supported the Union, the government would reciprocate by granting women the vote. She was mistaken.

Three amendment were proposed, the Thirteenth Amendment -- for which Stanton and Anthony petitioned -- abolished slavery in 1865, three months before the end of the war. That summer, the Fourteenth Amendment proposed that color would not be a reason to deny any American citizenship. The Fifteenth Amendment raised the right to vote.  Gender was not mentioned. The women were outraged; their abolitionist former allies had deserted them.  In her outrage, Elizabeth Stanton was very outspoken about her feeling…

Abolitionists bid the women of the nation stand aside and behold the salvation of the negro. Wendell Phillips says, "One idea for a generation," to come up in the order of their importance. First negro suffrage, then temperance, then woman suffrage. Three generations hence, woman suffrage will be in order! What an insult to the women who have labored 30 years for the emancipation of the slave, now when he is their political equal, to propose to lift him above their heads.

And another quote that became a bit more controversial…

Sambo isn't ready for the vote.

Frederic Douglas was quick to defend the new turn of events…

I must say that I do not see how any one can pretend that there is the same urgency in giving the ballot to woman as to the negro. When women, because they are women, are hunted down through the cities of New York and New Orleans; when they are dragged from their houses and hung upon lamp-posts; when they are the objects of insult and outrage at every turn; when their children are not allowed to enter schools; then they will have an urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own.

In the meantime, Susan Anthony was not pleased with Stanton’s outspoken rage towards a cause for which they had both fought for previously.  However, in true BFF fasion, she responded to Mr. Douglas…

When Mr. Douglass tells us that the cause of the black man is so perilous, I tell him that wronged and outraged as they are by this hateful and mean prejudice against color, he would not today exchange his sex and color, wronged as he is, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

In the decade following ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, Stanton and Anthony took the position that the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments actually did give women the right to vote. They argued that the Fourteenth Amendment, which defined citizens as "all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof," included women and that the Fifteenth Amendment provided all citizens with the right to vote. Using this logic, they said women now had the constitutional right to vote and that it was simply a matter of claiming that right. This argument came to be called "the new departure" in women's rights circles.   Anthony (in 1872), and later Stanton (in 1880), went to the polls and demanded to vote.  Despite this, and similar attempts made by hundreds of other women, it would be nearly 50 years before women had the right to vote throughout the United States.

Anthony started out as Stanton's protégée, but ultimately she outlived her.  Stanton died of heart failure at her home in New York City on October 26, 1902, 18 years before women were granted the right to vote.  In 1903, when a meeting was held in New Orleans, Susan B. Anthony arrived a bit late and entered the hall to a thunderous ovation. She was baffled by the applause. "What has happened, Anna?" she asked Anna Howard Shaw, her able lieutenant. Shaw's reply: "You happened, Aunt Susan."

 Before writing this particular post, I was more familiar with Susan Anthony.  I had no idea the strength and character behind Elizabeth Stanton.  What an amazing writer she was!!  I'm going to leave this post with one of my now all-time favorite quotes, which comes from Elizabeth Stanton's, Individual of Self...

And yet, there is a solitude, which each and every one of us has always carried with him, more inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea; the solitude of self. Our inner being, which we call ourself, no eye nor touch of man or angel has ever pierced. It is more hidden than the caves of the gnome; the sacred adytum of the oracle; the hidden chamber of eleusinian mystery, for to it only omniscience is permitted to enter. Such is individual life. Who, I ask you, can take, dare take, on himself the rights, the duties, the responsibilities of another human soul?

Ain't I A Woman... the Conclusion

Thus begins my third and final installment of "Ain't I A Woman".  I'm so very glad to have gotten to know her.  

When we last left her in Part II, Sojourner had begun making an income speaking on causes such as abolition and women's rights.  She had even bought her own home at the age of 54.

In 1956, Sojourner became involved with a group called the Progressive Friends, an offshoot of the Quakers.  The group believed in abolition, women's rights, non-violence, and communicating with spirits.  In 1857, she sold her home in Northampton and bought one in Harmonia, Michigan to live with the community.

 At 61, Sojourner Truth was a six-foot tall woman with a masculine voice. She also possessed a very powerful singing voice, and she sang whenever she spoke to crowds. As a speaker, Sojourner also became known for her quick wit and powerful presence. She would never be intimidated. Because of her powerful speaking ability, independent spirit and her physical presence, she was often accused of being a man in woman's clothing. She ended that in Silver Lake, Indiana when she opened her blouse and exposed her breasts to the audience that accused her.  Ain't I a woman, indeed!

Hoping to visit President Abraham Lincoln, Sojourner, when she was about sixty-seven years old, made a long journey from Michigan to Washington, D.C. After many weeks and some go-betweens, Sojourner succeeded in arranging an appointment.

She later wrote, "Upon entering his reception room we found about a dozen persons in waiting, among them two coloured women. I had quite a pleasant time waiting until he was disengaged, and enjoyed his conversation with others; he showed as much kindness and consideration to the colored persons as to the white. One case was that of a colored woman who was sick and likely to be turned out of her house on account of her inability to pay her rent. The president listened to her with much attention, and spoke to her with kindness and tenderness."

 

In 1870, Sojourner began campaigning for the federal government to provide former slaves with land.  She pursued this for seven years with very little success.  In 1874 she developed ulcers on her leg. She was successfully treated initially but fell ill frequently.  She toured as much as she could and in 1879 she spent a year in Kansas helping refugees and speaking in churches trying to gain support for the "Exodusters" as they tried to build new lives for themselves. 

In 1883, with ulcer-ridden legs, Sojourner made a final trip home in Battle Field, Michigan with her daughters, Diana and Elizabeth, their husbands and children.  She died there on November 26, 1883, at 86 years old surrounded by her family.

Sojourner Truth has been honored in many ways over the years, including a commemorative postage stamp in 1986 and a Mars probe in 1997.

"I hope that Sojourner Truth would be proud to see me, a descendant of slaves, serving as the first lady of the United States of America," said Michelle Obama at the April 28, 2009 commemorative ceremony unveiling the Sojourner Truth bronze bust by sculptor Artis Lane.  "Now many young boys and girls, like my own daughters, will come to Emancipation Hall and see the face of a woman who looks like them."

Thank you all so much for taking the time to read Sojourner's story.  I hope it struck the same chords in you as you read it, as it did in me as I wrote it.  Please stay tuned for the story of another remarkable woman's story in the long history of the fight for equal rights.  It is important in our quest to move forward that we also look back.

Ovaries Unite in November!!

Ain't I A Woman: Part II

Isabella had escaped from a heartless owner into the arms of the Van Wagenens.  She immediately turned her attention to retrieving her young son Peter.  Her previous owner had leased him to another slaveholder, who turned around and illegally sold him to an owner in Alabama.  Peter was five.  She begged Dumont and the other slaveowner to help her without success.  Then her friend told her about the activist Quakers, who helped her file an official complaint.  After many months of legal proceedings, Peter was returned to her, scarred and abused.

In 1929, Isabella left the Van Wagenens with a white evangelical teacher named Miss Gear quickly became know as a very influencial preacher.  She soon met a religious reformer who led a small group of followers.  His name was Elijah Pierson.  Isabella became the group's housekeeper.

Elijah treated her as a spiritual equal.  Unfortunately, a man named Robert Matthias arrived and took over as the group's leader.  The group's activities started becoming increasingly radical.  Soon after, Elijah died.  The group disbanded and Isabella was accused of poisoning Elijah.  She was eventually acquitted.

For a former slave, Isabella had already successfully fought the law and won her son, and defended herself successfully from criminal accusations.

In 1839, Isabella's son, Peter, shipped out on a whaling ship, Zone of Nantucket.  She received a total of five letters from him.  In 1842, the whaler returned with no sign of Peter.  She never heard from him again.

On June 1st, 1843, at 46 years old, 6-foot tall Isabella Baumfree changed her name to Sojourner Truth  and resolved to leave New York and make her way as a traveling preacher.  She wandered for a year living off of the kindness of strangers and finally settling down with the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Massachusetts.  This group of around 200 members lived on 500 acres of farmland, raising livestock and operating a silk factory.  The group was founded by abolitionists.  They were religiously tolerant, women's rights supporters, and pacifist in principles.  While there, she met and worked with William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and David Ruggles.  Unfortunately, the group disbanded in 1846 amid surmounting debt.

Sojourner went to live with one of the group's founders, George Benson and began dictating her memoirs to a woman named Olive Gilbert.  The Narrative of Sojourner Truth:  A Northern Slave was published privately by William Lloyd Garrison in 1850.  Suddenly she had speaking engagements and an income.  She spoke about anti-slavery and women's rights.

Soon thereafter, Sojourner Truth, born Isabella Baumfree into slavery on a farm in Hurley, New York in 1797, 54 years prior, was able to buy her own home...

In 1854, at the Ohio Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, she gave her most famous speech:

"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere.  Nobody ever help me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me any best place, and ain't I a woman?... I have plowed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me... and ain't I a woman?  I could work as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it), and bear the lash as well... and ain't I a woman?  I have borne thirteen children and seen most all sold off to slavery and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me... and ain't I a woman?"

Stay tuned for the final installation of Sojourner Truth's story.  It is important that we look back in order to move forward.  Please visit my facebook page called Ovaries for Obama.  Ovaries unite in November!!

Ain't I A Woman! Part I