Abolition and Suffrage in the United States

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 7, “Abolition and Suffrage Movements in the United States: ‘They undertook a campaign in favor of blacks,’ ” takes up claims made by Alva Myrdal in “A Parallel to the Negro Problem” and by Beauvoir in The Second Sex about the abolition and suffrage movements in the United States. Both situate (white) women’s early political engagements within the abolitionist movement and assert that white women fought for abolition only to be betrayed by Black men on the issue of suffrage. It is argued that a more nuanced understanding of the abolition and suffrage movements in the United States is made possible when we shift from Myrdal’s and Beauvoir’s narratives (which center white women) to the counternarratives offered by Ida B. Wells, Angela Davis, bell hooks, and Paula Giddings (all of whom recover the leadership roles of Black women and men in the abolition and suffrage movements). These issues have been examined for decades but have reemerged with renewed interest and insight during the two hundredth anniversary of woman’s suffrage in the United States.