Courage: the Antidote to Fear - Donna Cywinski
As we mourn yet another lost opportunity to call a capable, qualified, powerful woman our President (a mere 100 years after women earned their right to participate in the electoral process), we asked one of our favorite activists and educators, Donna Cywinski to help us remember the hard-fought path here ...and offer up some feminist fuel to propel our fight FORWARD.
She nailed it. Grab a cup of tea, settle in and enjoy.
Courage: The Antidote to Fear
by: Donna Cywinsk, activist and professor of women’s studies
Today, many of us are discouraged over the failure of the Democratic Party to choose a woman nominee for president. It seems that the concern about “electability” is really a sexist reason to vote for less capable men over more capable and qualified women candidates. For many of us, “Electability” is a call to fear and a dog whistle to misogyny. Our current president counts on fear and creates fear in order to rule and not lead. But this is women’s history month. This year being the centennial of the 19th Amendment, I thought it would be encouraging to remember how difficult it was to enact and ratify.
The struggle for votes for women was plagued by racism and fraught with contentious debates over strategy and tactics and arguments over progressive versus moderate ideals--not unlike our struggle to realize equality today. Only 1/3 of the attendees at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 signed the Declaration of Sentiments. In 1869 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Women’s Suffrage Association (NWSA). The NWSA opposed the 15th Amendment which extended the vote to black men because it did not also extend the vote to women. Black women were not particularly welcome in the NWSA. Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe formed the American Women’s Suffrage Association (AWSA) in 1869. The AWSA supported the 15th Amendment and prominent black suffragist, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, was a founding member of the AWSA. When she delivered the closing address at the AWSA convention in 1873, she identified race as a factor in the fight for women’s suffrage.
In 1876, the NWSA refused to enroll the names of 94 black women who attended the Seneca Falls Convention in a booklet about the Declaration of Sentiments. As a result, Mary Ann Shadd Carey (who studied law at Howard University but was refused the right to practice) formed the Colored Woman’s Progressive Franchise Association in Washington D.C. connecting education, labor issues and economic and business development to women’s right to vote. Black women’s clubs advocated for votes for women as well as education, job opportunities, anti-lynching, temperance and public health. In 1896 two major black women’s clubs merged to become that National Association of Colored Women (NACW). Mary Church Terrell became its first president. In speeches around the country she reminded white women that excluding black women from voting because of race, was no different than excluding white women from voting because of gender. Even though she was often invited to speak about suffrage to white women, Mary Church Terrell was asked to march with other black women at the back of the National Suffrage Parade in Washington D.C. in March, 1913 so as not to offend suffragists from the South.
In addition to their failure to unite with black women, white women could not agree on tactics or strategy. Women in both the NWSA and the AWSA argued over whether they should focus on passing votes for women in the states or focus on passing a Constitutional Amendment. In 1890 the two groups merged to form the National American Women’s Suffrage Association (NAWSA) which adopted a state-by-state approach to suffrage and generally excluded black women members, especially in the South.
By the turn of the 20th century, divisions arose between older white women who advocated for patience and younger white women who thought the movement had stalled. Alice Paul who studied in England and was familiar with the more militant campaigns of English Suffragettes, was a leader of the young American suffragists. Along with Lucy Burns, she organized the National Suffrage Parade in March of 1913. Between 5,000 to 8,000 women marched, drawing violent reactions from the large crowd. The marchers were protected by the Massachusetts and Pennsylvania National Guard and by young men from the Maryland Agricultural College while the D.C. police watched the melee.
After the march, additional complexities emerged. Although Alice Paul had insisted that black women march at the end of the Suffrage Parade, she insisted that suffrage apply to all women in every state. She and Lucy Burns broke with the NAWSA because the NAWSA agreed to allow southern states to hold a referendum on women’s suffrage if more than 8% of population signed a petition. Alice and Lucy founded the National Women’s Party to demand a constitutional amendment granting woman suffrage to everyone.
From 1917 to 1919, the “Silent Sentinels” picketed the White House to point out the hypocrisy of President Wilson’s war to make the world safe for democracy when half of the population in America was denied the right to vote. The women were regularly arrested for blocking traffic even though they stood well out of the way. Refusing to pay the fines, the demonstrators chose jail instead. Over the next months, the demonstrators were given increasingly harsh prison sentences and sent to the Occoquan workhouse in Lorton Virginia. November 14, 1917 is known as the “Night of Terror” as prison guards repeatedly abused the women physically. When the papers printed the accounts of the Night of Terror, the public began to turn against the government. In January 1918, President Wilson gave in and announced that he supported votes for women. It took an additional 2 ½ years of struggle to ratify the 19th amendment.
In thinking about the history of votes for women, our current struggle for equal rights and our struggle to elect a woman president, I decided to put together a collection of remarks by the four major 2020 women candidates free of the noise and spin of the pundits. The result is quite extraordinary and shows what exceptional candidates these women were. We will have a woman as our President one day verey soon, and when we do …it will be a testiment to generations of women that kept moving forward.In the words of the 2020 phenominal female candidates:
Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren on Truth, Courage and Fighting the Righteous Fight
Let’s speak truth that we have been reminded of too often during these last few months: Racism is real in this country. Sexism is real in this country. Homophobia is real in this country. Anti-Semitism is real in this country. Unless we speak that truth, we will not confront these issues honestly (Kamala Harris).
What we need right now in this country is less of this grandstanding and gridlock, less of the shutdowns, which we just saw, and the putdowns, and much more of moving our country forward (Amy Klobuchar).
What’s been missing is courage (Elizabeth Warren).
Courage in Washington, DC is not standing by yourself and throwing a bunch of darts. Courage is whether or not you’re willing to stand next to someone you don’t always agree with for the betterment of this country (Amy Klochuchar).
Leadership requires bravery. And if we don't have the courage to take on the most urgent threats we face, then what are we doing? Bravery isn't always easy. Bravery is making a choice to do things differently—even when people tell you it can't be done, simply because it never has been. It's on us to decide we're up to the challenge of doing it anyway (Kirsten Gillibrand).
You get in the fight because you just gotta keep beating it until you finally break the thing (Elizabeth Warren).
We need to fight for an America where power truly belongs to the people, where our politicians care about everyone in this country -- and lead not from weakness or ego but from strength of character (Kirsten Gillibrand).
Choose to fight only righteous fights, because then when things get tough — and they will — you will know that there is only one option ahead of you: Nevertheless, you must persist. Our work continues, the fight goes on and big dreams never die (Elizabeth Warren).
If you are interested in learning more about the struggle for Woman Suffrage in the U.S., here are some excellent resources:
Berry, Diana Ramey and Gross, Kali Nicole. A Black Women’s History of the United States. Boston: Beacon Press (2018)
DuBois, Ellen Carol. Suffrage: Women’s Long Battle for the Vote. New York: Simon & Schuster (2020)
Hazzard, Sharon, “The Roosevelt’s Disagree: The Debate About Women’s Suffrage,” The Ultimate History Project. http://ultimatehistoryproject.com/womens-anti-suffrage-movement.html
Terborg-Penn, Rosalyn. African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920. Bloomington: Indiana University Press (1998)
Ware, Susan. Why They Marched: The Untold Stories of the Women Who Won the Right to Vote. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (2019)
Zimit, Susan. Roses and Radicals: The Epic Story of How American Women won the Right to Vote. New York: Viking Press (2018)