Did Susan B. Anthony Vow To Lower Off Arm Relatively Than Demand Vote 'For the Negro and Not the Girl'?

Forward of the 2024 presidential election, {a photograph} went viral displaying how girls had put “I voted” stickers on famed suffragist Susan B. Anthony’s grave in past elections. With U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris campaigning for the presidency, many individuals on-line mentioned the gesture had particular significance now {that a} Black lady was working for the workplace. 

Nevertheless, quite a few posts sought to counter that sentiment by highlighting a quote attributed to Anthony that indicated she had racist views, amongst them a want to proceed excluding Black males from the proper to vote, not less than till that proper was efficiently secured for ladies. 

Posts on X referred to this purported quote from Anthony: “I’ll minimize off this proper arm of mine earlier than I’ll ever work for or demand the poll for the Negro and never the girl.”

(X person @rahne_jones)

Anthony certainly made that assertion in 1866, after a gathering additionally attended by Black abolitionist and activist Frederick Douglass. Her biographies fluctuate on the precise wording and seek advice from her saying she would minimize off both her “arm” or “hand.” Anthony was responding to an argument about whether or not to prioritize suffrage for Black males or for white girls. A model of the quote has been cited by her official biographer. As such, we charge this an accurate attribution. 

The Quote in Context

The web site of the Nationwide Structure Heart, a museum in Washington, D.C., centered on the U.S. Structure, referenced her quote as follows:

The [Seneca Falls Convention of 1848] was additionally notable in that it excluded black girls and girls of different minority populations. Exclusion was a outstanding aspect of the brand new suffrage motion, which appeared at instances to view suffrage as a zero-sum recreation between oppressed populations.

In an 1866 assembly the place Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony argued about whether or not to prioritize suffrage for black males or suffrage for white girls, Anthony mentioned, “I’ll minimize off this proper arm of mine earlier than I’ll ever work or demand the poll for the Negro and never the girl.”

Black girls remained largely excluded from suffrage discussions as seen in Sojourner Fact’s 1867 touch upon the difficulty: “There’s a nice stir about coloured males getting their rights, however not a phrase in regards to the coloured girls; and if coloured males get their rights, and coloured girls not theirs, the coloured males shall be masters over the ladies, and will probably be simply as dangerous because it was earlier than.”

The National Susan B. Anthony Museum says the quote emerged from a narrative written by Ida Husted Harper, a fellow suffragist and journalist, whom Anthony herself requested to be her biographer, in accordance with Britannica. The museum describes how, in 1866, Anthony was privately approached by abolitionists Theodore Tilton and Wendell Phillips, who requested her to droop her work on girls’s suffrage and focus on getting the vote for males of coloration solely. She reportedly spoke the above phrases in anger.  

In keeping with Volume I of Harper’s “The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony,” Anthony made the remarks in a personal assembly after talking on the Girls’s Rights Conference, the place she had truly emphasised the necessity to unite the causes of Black individuals and girls. That is Harper’s model of the encounter (emphasis ours):

A short while thereafter [the 1866 Women’s Rights Convention] Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, Mr. Phillips and Mr. Tilton have been within the Normal workplace discussing the work. Mr. Phillips argued that the time was ripe for placing the phrase “white” out of the New York structure, at its coming conference, however not for placing out “male.” Mr. Tilton supported him, in direct contradiction to all he had so warmly advocated only some weeks earlier than, and mentioned what the ladies ought to do was to canvass the State with speeches and petitions for the enfranchisement of the negro, leaving that of the ladies to come back afterward, presumably twenty years later, when there could be one other revision of the structure. Mrs. Stanton, fully overcome by the eloquence of those two gifted males, acquiesced in all they mentioned; however Miss Anthony, who by no means might be swerved from her normal by any sophistry or blandishments, was extremely indignant and declared that she would sooner minimize off her proper hand than ask the poll for the black man and never for lady. After Phillips had left, she overheard Tilton say to Mrs. Stanton, “What does ail Susan? She acts like one possessed.” Mrs. Stanton replied, “I cannot think about; I by no means earlier than noticed her so unreasonable and completely impolite.”

We must always be aware that the Susan B. Anthony Museum calls the concept that Anthony favored suffrage for white girls over suffrage for Black individuals normally a “misrepresentation.” It cites one other assertion by Anthony during which she calls for equal rights “for each man black or white, & for each lady, black or white”:

It’s not a query of priority between girls & black males. Neither has a declare to priority upon an Equal Rights platform. However the enterprise of this affiliation is to demand for each man black or white, & for each lady, black or white, that they shall be this instantaneous enfranchised & admitted into the physique politic with equal rights & privileges.

Anthony was a part of an anti-slavery family, but prioritized the voting rights of white girls over these of Black males, whereas Black girls had been fully left out of the talk. Simply earlier than Anthony made the assertion about reducing off her hand, she gave a speech on the Girls’s Rights Conference that emphasised uniting these causes into one (emphasis ours):

There’s, there may be, however one true foundation, viz.: that taxation and illustration should be inseparable; therefore our demand should now transcend lady—it should prolong to the farthest restrict of the precept of the “consent of the ruled,” as the one licensed or simply authorities. We due to this fact want to broaden our lady’s rights platform and make it in title what it ever has been in spirit, a human rights platform. As girls we will not declare for ourselves what we don’t for others, nor can we work in two separate actions to get the poll for the 2 disfranchised courses, negroes and girls, since to take action should be at double price of time, power and cash. … Due to this fact, that we might henceforth focus all our forces for the sensible software of our one grand, distinctive, nationwide concept — common suffrage — I hope we are going to unanimously undertake the decision earlier than us, thus resolving ourselves into the American Equal Rights Affiliation.

Regardless that she fashioned the American Equal Rights Affiliation with Black activists like Douglass, there was fixed pressure inside the group over its priorities. Anthony and Douglass had a decades-long friendship that was additionally fraught with disagreements. For one factor, Black girls have been ignored in AERA’s activism, according to historical past professor Lisa Tetrault. 

The AERA dissolved in 1869 over disagreements about whether or not to assist the Fifteenth Modification, which gave Black males the proper to vote. Certainly, Anthony was among the many suffragists who did not assist the Fifteenth Modification.

In an 1868 speech to a bunch of Black males, Anthony argued towards the modification as a result of if voting “be an inalienable proper, it’s as a lot the proper of the black lady as it’s of the white. And you may’t ask it for any class of males, with out asking it for all the ladies who’re disadvantaged of it.”

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