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The Vote
and take it all, and then scold because there is about the only colored woman that goes about
no food. I want you to consider on that, chil’n. to speak for the rights of the colored women. I
I call you chil’n; you are somebody’s chil’n, and want to keep the thing stirring, now that the ice
I am old enough to be mother of all that is here. is cracked. What we want is a little money. You
I want women to have their rights. In the courts men know that you get as much again as women
women have no right, no voice; nobody speaks when you write, or for what you do. When we
for them. I wish woman to have her voice there get our rights we shall not have to come to you
among the pettifoggers.° If it is not a fit place for for money, for then we shall have money enough
women, it is unfit for men to be there. in our own pockets; and may be you will ask us
I am above eighty years old;° it is about time for money. But help us now until we get it. It is Document Project
for me to be going. I have been forty years a slave a good consolation to know that when we have
and forty years free, and would be here forty got this battle once fought we shall not be com-
years more to have equal rights for all. I suppose ing to you any more. You have been having our
I am kept here because something remains for rights so long, that you think, like a slave-holder,
me to do; I suppose I am yet to help to break that you own us. I know that it is hard for one
the chain. I have done a great deal of work; as who has held the reins for so long to give up; it
much as a man, but did not get so much pay. I cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better when
used to work in the field and bind grain, keeping it closes up again. I have been in Washington
up with the cradler;° but men doing no more, about three years, seeing about these colored
got twice as much pay; so with the German people. Now colored men have [will soon attain]
women. They work in the field and do as much the right to vote. There ought to be equal rights
work, but do not get the pay. We do as much, we now more than ever, since colored people have
eat as much, we want as much. I suppose I am got their freedom.

° Tricksters. Source: Philip S. Foner and Robert James Branham, eds., Lift
° She was actually about seventy. Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787–1900 (Tuscaloosa:
° A machine for binding and bunching grain. University of Alabama Press, 1998), 464–65.

Proceedings of the American | A Debate: Negro Male Suffrage vs.
Equal Rights Association Woman Suffrage, 1869

The May 12, 1869, meeting of the AMERICAN African American leaders of the day and key
EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION was its last. By this advocates for abolition, African American rights,
time, tensions between those who prioritized and women’s rights. Susan B. Anthony, Lucy
black male suffrage and those who prioritized Stone, Pauline W. Davis, Julia Ward Howe, and
woman suffrage had torn the association apart. Elizabeth Cady Stanton were key white advo-
In this excerpt from the meeting’s proceedings, cates for both abolition and women’s rights
we hear from Frederick Douglass and Frances and, to differing extents, supporters of African
Ellen Watkins Harper, two of the most important American rights.

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