"The White Women All Go for Sex": Frances Harper on Suffrage, Citizenship, and the Reconstruction South

Abstract

For brief period immediately after Civil War, American reformers optimistically imagined a reconstructed republic would incorporate woman suffrage and abolitionist interests. An 1865 pamphlet entitled Convention for New York State conveys this optimism nobly, imagining reforms in state would elevate national politics. It endorses the right of suffrage to all citizens, without distinction of race or and envisions reconstruction of this Union [as] a broader, deeper work than restoration of rebel States. It is lifting of entire nation into practical realization of our Republican Idea (Equal Rights n. pag.). Below this appeal to make New York a genuine republic, pamphlet also advertises a group of convention speakers--including Henry Blackwell, Frederick Douglass, Frances Watkins Harper, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton--all of whom represent permutations of race and gender would constitute New York's new citizens (Equal Rights n. pag.). By end of decade, however, colorful optimism of this noble consensus would fade; men and women, black and white, would excoriate one another's views on race, gender, and class in debates over Fifteenth Amendment. While list of speakers at Equal Convention depicted a unified front, signs of disillusionment quickly appeared. For example, Frances Harper's 1866 speech We Are All Bound Up Together declared: I tell you if there is any class of people who need to be lifted out of their airy nothings and selfishness, it is white women of America (qtd. in Sklar 196). The debate grew even uglier at 1869 meeting of American Equal Association (AERA) led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, often called schism in woman suffrage movement. (1) Woman suffrage clashed with interests of black suffrage as a cohort of reformers who had previously collaborated fought bitter public battles over whether black men should attain voting rights before women. The animosity caused a split in racial and gender reform interests left black women like Harper at intersection of a divided community. Harper's somewhat infamous statement at convention, when it was a question of race she let question of sex go, seems to make a transparent choice of racial loyalty over her commitment to woman suffrage (Annual Meeting 247). If her comment was accurately recorded which is not certain it seems to conflict with more balanced arguments for black women's rights in her letters, speeches, and fiction. These sources tell us a great deal more about Harper's views during this critical historical moment than a brief AERA transcript can, and they also shed light on her distinct vision of political activism. Harper's AERA comment named two major points--race and sex coincide with two major problems she had with AERA: first, it reveals her frustration with sexual politics white women engaged to attack Fifteenth Amendment and anti-reformers had used persistently to deny African American citizenship; second, it indicates that, although both African Americans and women were under scrutiny as potential citizens, women's rights offered her nothing if they did not acknowledge her rights as a black woman. While one might infer Harper's lesser question of merely refers to gender and woman suffrage, tone of debate over Fifteenth Amendment and novel Harper was writing in 1869, Minnie's Sacrifice, indicate this question of sex also had to do with sexuality. Sexual politics, in this context, had much to do with stereotypes about sexual behavior rather than mere difference between men and women. Stanton and Paulina Davis, for example, insisted Fifteenth Amendment would place them in sexual jeopardy at hands of black tyrants ('[Annual Meeting 247). Davis even implied enfranchised black men would use their political power to pursue helpless white women, arguing, that sort of men should not have makings of laws for governance of women throughout land. …