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The Vote DOCUMENT PROJECT

after the thirteenth amendment ended slavery in 1865, the Fourteenth amendment, pro-
posed in June 1866, sought to secure black civil rights by defining citizenship and guaran-
teeing the equal protection of the laws. In establishing the means by which representation
in congress would be apportioned, this amendment used the word male for the first time
in the constitution. Supporters of woman suffrage were dismayed, for they had hoped for
universal suffrage — the right of every adult to vote without regard to race or sex. In august
1866, a group of women had joined with Frederick Douglass to found the american equal
rights association (aera) in an effort to create a united front for advancing the causes of
black and women’s rights. When it became evident that the Fifteenth amendment, proposed
in February 1869, would secure black male suffrage but not woman suffrage, the aera split.
Some aera members, led by Douglass, believed that black male suffrage was the most
immediate need. Others, including Susan B. anthony and elizabeth cady Stanton, gave prior-
ity to woman suffrage. But what did black women think? Did they ally themselves with black
men or white women? In the following documents, black women voice their opinions on
suffrage, an issue that went to the core of their identities; and, we read how the recognition of
black manhood figured into popular arguments for the black male vote.
contemporary visual representations of Black reconstruction, notably those depicting
black male voters and politicians, reveal the historical moment and the political, racial, and cul-
tural as well as the aesthetic aims of the artists. In the late 1860s, the radical republicans were
still in their ascendancy, but by 1874, their heyday was over. Within the party and throughout
the nation, support for freedpeople and their cause had diminished.

Sojourner Truth | Equal Voting Rights, 1867

SOJOURNER TRUTH (1797–1883) was nearly seventy stir about colored men getting their rights, but
years old when she spoke at the second meeting not a word about the colored women; and if
of the American Equal Rights Association in New colored men get their rights, and not colored
York City in May 1867. She had begun life as a women theirs, you see the colored men will
slave in New York and become one of the most be masters over the women, and it will be just
famous African Americans of the nineteenth as bad as it was before. So I am for keeping the
century. An abolitionist and a supporter of thing going while things are stirring; because if
women’s rights, Truth electrified audiences with we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to
her insight and candor. get it going again. White women are a great deal
smarter, and know more than colored women,
while colored women do not know scarcely any-
thing. They go out washing, which is about as
I feel that if I have to answer for the deeds done high as a colored woman gets, and their men go
in my body just as much as a man, I have a right about idle, strutting up and down; and when the
to have just as much as a man. There is a great women come home, they ask for their money
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