Women's rights and Black liberation, part 3
Former slaves backed early movement
By Leslie Feinberg
The most decisive, consistent support for the
19th-century women's rights movement came from Black men
actively engaged in the struggle to abolish slavery.
Charles Lenox Remond and Frederick Douglass, for example,
heard and understood the rights that Black and white women were
demanding.
As historian Philip S. Foner noted, "Remond was one of the
very early 'woman's rights men,' and as a delegate to the World
Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, he refused to take
his seat because women delegates were excluded."
Douglass fought long and hard for women's rights. Angela
Davis wrote that Douglass was responsible "for officially
introducing the issue of women's rights to the Black Liberation
movement, where it was enthusiastically welcomed."
Frederick Douglass strove to build a movement of Black
people, South and North, to liberate their nation. At the same
time, he appealed to white workers to see how slavery kept all
labor--chattel slaves and wage-slaves--in the position of
captive classes. And throughout his tireless coalition building
as a leading Aboli tion ist, he championed the rights of
women--Black and white.
Douglass was one of 31 men present at the historic 1848
Seneca Falls Convention in upstate New York that marked the
birth of the women's rights movement in the United States.
Douglass had escaped from slavery only 10 years earlier.
When Elizabeth Cady Stanton proposed a resolution in support
of women's right to vote, even her co-convener Lucretia Mott
shrank from the proposal and refused to raise it,
characterizing it as too radical. But Frederick Douglass
seconded Stanton's motion. The resolution passed narrowly--but
only because of Douglass' intervention.
Douglass was the only man allowed to address the convention.
He argued passionately in defense of women's right to vote.
Douglass said to those in attendance, "Our doctrine is that
'right is of no sex.'"
Soon after the Seneca Falls Convention, Douglass published
an editorial in his news paper, the North Star. The article,
headlined "The Rights of Women," carried Douglass' advocacy of
women's rights to an even wider audience.
In 1853, Douglass wrote the call for a women's rights
conference in Rochester, N.Y. The call not only demanded that
women's pay be equal to men's but that women, including married
women, be entitled to the same property rights as men. The
resolution passed with a bigger percentage of votes than at the
previous conference.
Douglass spoke out on this issue at the "National Convention
of Colored Freed men," held in Cleveland about the same time as
the Seneca Falls Convention.
An account by S. Jay Walker recalled, "He succeeded in
amending a resolution defining delegates so that it would be
'understood' to include women ... an amendment that was carried
'with three cheers for women's rights.'"
Shortly before his death in 1895, Douglass spoke at a
women's suffrage conference. The sensitivity and solidarity of
this pre-eminent leader and political bridge builder was
evident: "No man, however eloquent, can speak for woman as
woman can for herself. Nevertheless, I hold that this cause is
not altogether and exclusively woman's cause. It is the cause
of human brotherhood as well as the cause of human sisterhood,
and both must rise and fall together. Woman cannot be elevated
without elevating man, and man cannot be depressed without
depressing woman also."
Sources: Philip S. Foner, introduction to "Fred erick
Douglass on Women's Rights." Angela Y. Davis, "Women, Race
& Class." "Selections from the Writings of Frederick
Douglass." Jay S. Walker, "Frederick Douglass and Woman
Suffrage," Black Scholar, Vol. IV, Nos. 6-7 (March-April,
1973).
Nest: Democrats, Republicans and white supremacy tear
united front asunder.
Reprinted from the April 1, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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