This is when Alice Paul walked in. An even more radical suffragette than Elizabeth Cady Stanton, this Quaker was more focused on federal approval and support of women's suffrage. She concocted a plan to have the NAWSA and other suffragettes march on Washington, D.C. shortly before Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated to gain publicity and support. It took her two months to raise money enough for the parade, which included nine bands, four mounted brigades, three heralds, more than twenty floats, and upwards of five thousand marchers.
The parade itself was a huge success, grabbing the attention of the media and President Wilson (seeing as it stole the limelight from him). Attacks from spectating men and policemen garnered more support for the suffragettes' cause. There were congressional hearings about the mistreatment of the women by the crowds and the lack of protection from the police, which gained the suffragettes even more attention from the federal government. Alice Paul was proud of her work that day, proud to have gained so much more support and attention for her cause.
But, as we scan through the history archives and pictures of the event, we discover that we can only find pictures and stories about the white marchers. If this is a parade for universal suffrage for all, regardless of gender, then where are the minority women?
Are they here?
Or here?
Where are the black suffragettes? Where are Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary Church Terrel, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Anna Julia Cooper? They were all black suffragettes striving and fighting for equal voting rights. Why were they told to march at the very back of the parade, where no one could see them? The answer is plain and simple: racism. White women either didn't to get the vote for black women or they wanted them to be in the movement but unseen and unheard. These black suffragettes refused to comply with the white women's demands and fought for the rights publicly and without fear.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett refused to march at the back of the 1913 parade and marched in front with the Illinois delegation, was a founding member of the NAACP, founded and led the Negro Fellowship League, and was elected to a chair in the Chicago Equal Rights League.
Mary Church Terrel helped form the National Association of Colored Women in 1896 after the 1893 World Fair refused to let her participate.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper formed YMCA Sunday Schools, became a leader in the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and refused to take the World Fair's insult laying down by going after the organizers and charging them with refusing to allow colored folks participate.
Anna Julia Cooper wrote one of the most influential feminist books, A Voice from the South: By A Woman from the South, which called for the cultivation of intelligent black women to help the entire black community.
Racism within the suffrage movement was greater than most know. Half of the NAWSA was made up of white, Christian, middle- to upper-class women who only wanted to get the vote for themselves. The other half wanted to get universal voting rights but told black women to lay low in the movement. To a point this was semi-understandable: to get an amendment that guaranted women the right to vote to the Constitution passed require two-thirds of the states to pass it. Southern states were vehemently against allowing black women to vote. So having the face of the suffragette movement be white would gain more support from the Southern states.
Sojourner Truth says it best "And ain't I a woman?" Black women were still women who deserved to fight for the vote and have their voices heard. The state support argument can only go so far; eventually it comes down to plain racism - white women who think that black women are inferior to them.
This hasn't changed much since the 19th Amendment finally passed in 1920. Black women have always been shoved to the sidelines and out of side in feminist movements. If they do want to label themselves as a feminist or a role model for younger women, they have to be absolutely flawless. They aren't allowed to make a single mistake, have to match the white women's ideal of beauty, be smarter than everyone else, and must always be ready to drop their lives to defend feminism. The standards for black women to be feminists are atrocious! You never see white women held up to these standards.
Modern-day examples of this are Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé. They are constantly attacked for calling themselves feminists; they face attacks on their feminist standpoints with their attackers' ammunition being everything from past irrelevant actions to internalized misogyny that they've worked on correcting to their own self-confidence. Seriously, just because they are proud of their bodies and display them as they choose to doesn't change anything - if anything, it only reinforces their feminism by refusing to comply to white men's and women's ideas of beauty and submissiveness.
Then we have these white pop-stars Tayler Swift and Iggy Azalea who are hailed as supreme feminist leaders when they are extremely problematic, to say the least. Tayler Swift is working on her internalized misogyny and changing her ideas of feminism, but both these ladies support the wrong idea of feminism. Submissiveness to men, the need to be sexy for men, attack other women for men - they have major problems with their ideology and yet the media acts like no one can get more feminist than them. We already have two very great feminist musicians with very little problems who have proved to be able to improve themselves and their ideas to better fit with true feminist ideas, so we don't need these two problematic white women to be the only ones focused on in feminism.
Black suffrage and black feminism have always faced pressure to fold under white ideals but the strength, determination, and sheer iron will of black women will always refuse to buckle and will always keep fighting for black rights and respect.
