 | By Kathleen Kingsbury Acting Editorial Page Editor |
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When Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify women’s suffrage, one hundred years ago on Tuesday, many American women saw the realization of a dream deferred since the country’s founding: They could have a hand in shaping democracy. |
For the suffragists who had battled for voting rights, risking arrest and physical abuse, it was a triumph. But many powerful individuals and institutions refused to partake in the celebrations. And The New York Times editorial board was among those hostile to the cause. |
In the years leading up to that victory, The Times declared its disapproval. “The New York Times does not believe that the achievement of woman suffrage will increase either the happiness or the prosperity of women in America,” the board wrote in 1913. |
Two years later, when measures permitting women to vote were on the ballot in various states, the board argued: “Without the counsel and guidance of men, no woman ever ruled a state wisely and well.” |
As a woman now running our editorial page, I am not proud of all of my predecessors’ views. But I want to confront rather than paper over the times when our page has stood on the wrong side of a fight. By acknowledging our past failings, we can set a new course for our future. Our page’s history has always served as a guide — in some cases sharpening our sense of moral clarity, in others revealing our blind spots. |
My colleague, Brent Staples, is a leading voice on how vital it is to reckon with our moments of shame, narrow-mindedness and bigotry. An editorial board writer for more than 30 years, he has wrestled with the wrongs of white suffragists who marginalized Black women — and even compromised with white supremacy — during the battle for the ballot. |
Brent’s essays reveal the way the suffrage movement betrayed Black women. In the reign of racial terror that followed emancipation, he wrote, white women sought the vote partly as a symbol of parity with men whereas Black women were fighting for the survival of their families. Leading white suffragists insisted on shunting Black women aside, even demanding they march at the back of a 1913 parade. Lionized figures like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony demanded their own freedoms, but were no freer of classist and racist views than many of their contemporaries. |
This past weekend, Brent and the editorial board have again examined the unfinished work of the fight for the 19th Amendment. We recognize the Black women who played pivotal roles in the struggle for women’s voting rights, only to be elided from records of the movement. After white women got the right to vote, it would be another 45 years before the Voting Rights Act eliminated some of the discriminatory measures that kept Black women from the polls, including poll taxes and literacy tests. The fight to fully secure African-Americans’ right to vote continues, as the Georgia politician Stacey Abrams and others have written in our pages. |
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a respected orator and poet, declared at the 11th National Women’s Rights Convention that the struggles of Black women and white women, rich and poor, were “all bound up together.” More than a century later, while we worry that voters will have access to ballots and that our election will be secure, her words ring truer than ever. |
One of the benefits of working for an institution older than women’s suffrage itself is the opportunity to learn from our long history. We have been wrong. So have the advocates and leaders who fought for many of our hard-earned rights. That makes for a more complex history — but it’s the only one worth telling. |
They were tireless organizers. Tenacious fighters. And political geniuses. They were Black and Latinx. Indigenous and immigrant. Together, they won women the right to vote and laid the cornerstone for gender equality in the United States. Yet their stories have rarely been told. Until now. Join us for a virtual play, celebrating the unsung heroes of suffrage, based on the book conceived and edited by Veronica Chambers. R.S.V.P. for the premiere on Tuesday, Aug. 18 at 7 p.m. Eastern. |
Here’s what we’re focusing on today: |
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