Updated introduction by Karyn Pomerantz, August 2020. Original article by Al Simpson, April 2019
This month, August 2020, marks the 100th anniversary of the vote for women’s suffrage in 1920. However, the government delayed voting for white women until 1924 and for black women until 1965! The struggle for women’s suffrage is suffused with sexism and racism. Some white leaders, like Elizabeth Stanton, appeased the South’s opposition to the black people’s vote. They sacrificed the voting rights of black women, and forced black suffragists to march in the back lines in their massive 1913 demonstration.
The article, How Racism Weakens the Fight for Women’s Suffrage: Multiracial Unity Is Crucial to Stopping Sexism was published in April 2019 at:
It covers:
the intersection of racism and anti-sexist politics
the alleged importance of voting
the social and economic status of black and white women
the role of abolitionists in suffrage struggles
Excerpts:
The only genuine path to liberation is through a multi-racial, multi-cultural, anti-capitalist movement of both men and women. This movement has to be class-based in nature, not at all like the amorphous marches of recent years. The movement must take as its central and guiding focus the needs and aspirations of the entire working class. To achieve this, there cannot be any divisions based on sex, race, religion, sexual orientation, immigration status, and whatever else the bosses will come up with to divide us. This is our way forward.
On voting, by Rosa Luxembourg:
“It is sheer insanity to believe that capitalists would good humoredly obey the socialist verdict of a parliament or of a national assembly, that they would calmly renounce property, profit, the right to exploit. All ruling classes fought to the end, with tenacious energy, to preserve their privileges. The Roman patricians and the medieval feudal barons alike, the English cavaliers and the American slaveowners, the Walachian boyars and the Lyonnais silk manufacturers – all shed rivers of blood, they all marched over corpses, committed murder, and arson, instigated civil war and treason, in order to defend their privileges and their power.”
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