The racial faultline running through the US women’s suffrage movement was never more obvious than in the southern states during the early 20th century.
- There was particular concern among southern politicians to stop black women from becoming enfranchised because they were thought to be better educated than black men, more likely to be assertive about their rights and more difficult to bully into submission.
The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) meeting held in New Orleans in 1903 was racially segregated so that,
for example, Sylvanie Williams of the National Association of Coloured Women was delegated to attend the meeting in what was her own home city but was not then allowed to attend.
Also in 1903 the NAWSA voted to allow state affiliates to determine their own entrance qualifications, to accommodate the developing southern suffragist groups who would wish to be whites-only organisations fighting for a whites-only vote.
The executive board of the NAWSA was forced to make a public statement about its attitude towards black women as potential voters.
- They endorsed a state’s position on rights regarding the question of giving black women the vote, so the southern states could write in an opt-out clause. (State can choose whether to enfranchise black women)
At the following annual meeting, in the District of Columbia 1904, black women were admitted.
- One, Mary Church Terrell, challenged a motion calling for federal protection for children and animals by adding that the Convention should stand up ‘also for Negroes’.
- At the beginning of the 20th century black women had slipped so far down the agenda that they were no longer being considered as part of substantive motions they were being thought of along with animals.
- The process of exclusion, which was eventually going to disenfranchise them, was well underway.