Say:

Susan B. Anthony once said, “I will cut off this right arm before I work or demand the vote for the Negro and not the woman.”

Classification:

Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, a photograph surfaced viral showing how women had put “I Voted” stickers on the grave of famous suffragette Susan B. Anthony in past elections. As US Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned for the presidency, many people online said the gesture had special meaning now that a Black woman was running for office.

However, several publications attempted to counter that sentiment. highlighting a quote attributed to Anthony indicating that he held racist views, including a desire to continue excluding black men from the right to vote, at least until that right was successfully secured for women.

Publications in X referred to this supposed quote from Anthony: “I will cut off this right arm before I work or demand the vote for black men and not women.”

(X user @rahne_jones)

In fact, Anthony made that statement in 1866, after a meeting also attended by black abolitionist and activist Frederick Douglass. Their biographies vary in exact wording and refer to her saying that she would cut off her “arm” or “hand.” Anthony was responding to a discussion about whether suffrage should be prioritized for black men or white women. His official biographer has cited a version of the quote. As such, we rate this attribution as correct.

The quote in context

The website of the National Constitution Center, a museum in Washington, DC, focused on the United States Constitution. referenced your quote as follows:

The (Seneca Falls Convention of 1848) was also notable because it excluded black women and women from other minority populations. Exclusion was a prominent facet of the new suffrage movement, which at times seemed to view suffrage as a zero-sum game between oppressed populations.

At an 1866 meeting in which Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony argued over whether to prioritize suffrage for black men or suffrage for white women, Anthony said, “I will cut off this right arm before I work or demand the “I vote for the black man and not the woman.”

Black women remained largely excluded from discussions of suffrage, as seen in Sojourner Truth’s 1867 commentary on the subject: “There is a great deal of excitement about colored men obtaining their rights, but not a word about colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and “Colored women are not theirs, colored men will be masters of women and everything will be as bad as before.”

He Susan B. Anthony National Museum The quote is said to have arisen from a story written by Ida Husted Harper, a fellow suffragist and journalist, who was asked by Anthony herself to be her biographer, according to British. The museum describes how, in 1866, Anthony was approached privately by abolitionists Theodore Tilton and Wendell Phillips, who asked him to discontinue his work on women’s suffrage and focus on gaining the vote only for men of color. He reportedly uttered the above words in anger.

According Volume I of Harper’s “The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony” Anthony made the remarks in a private meeting after speaking at the Women’s Rights Convention, where she emphasized the need to unite black and women’s causes. This is Harper’s version of the encounter (emphasis added):

Shortly afterwards (the Women’s Rights Convention of 1866), Miss Anthony, Mrs Stanton, Mr Phillips and Mr Tilton were in Standard’s office discussing work. Phillips argued that the time had come to remove the word “white” from the New York constitution, at its next convention, but not to remove “male.” Mr. Tilton supported him, in direct contradiction of everything he had so warmly defended only a few weeks before, and said that what women should do was to sound out the State with speeches and petitions for the emancipation of the Negro, leaving that of women . would come later, presumably twenty years later, when there would be another revision of the constitution. Mrs. Stanton, totally overwhelmed by the eloquence of these two talented men, agreed to everything they said; but Miss Anthony, who could never deviate from her standard by sophistry or flattery, became very indignant, and declared that she would rather cut off her right hand than ask for the ballot for the black man and not for the woman. After Phillips left, she heard Tilton say to Mrs. Stanton, “What’s wrong with Susan? She’s acting like someone possessed.” Mrs Stanton replied: “I can’t imagine it; I have never seen her so unreasonable and absolutely rude before.”

We should note that the Susan B. Anthony Museum calls the idea that Anthony favored white women’s suffrage over black suffrage in general as “misrepresentation.” Quotes another statement by Anthony in which he demands equal rights “for every man, white or black, and for every woman, white or black”:

It is not a question of precedence between black women and men. Neither of them has the right to take precedence on an Equal Rights platform. But the objective of this association is to demand for every man, black or white, and for every woman, black or white, that at this moment they be granted the right to vote and be admitted into the body politic with equal rights and privileges.

Anthony was part of a fight against slavery. familybut prioritized the voting rights of white women over those of black men, while black women had been completely left out of the debate. Just before Anthony made the statement about cutting off her hand, she gave a speech in the Convention on the Rights of Women which emphasized uniting these causes into one (emphasis ours):

There is, there can be, only one true basis, namely: that taxation and representation must be inseparable; Therefore, our demand must now go beyond women: it must extend to the furthest limit of the principle of “consent of the governed,” as the only authorized or just government. Therefore, we wish to expand our women’s rights platform and turn it in name into what it has always been in spirit: a human rights platform. As women we can no longer claim for ourselves what we do not do for others, nor can we work in two separate movements to get the vote of the two disenfranchised classes, blacks and women, since doing so requires twice as much time. , energy and money. …Therefore, that we may from now on concentrate all our forces on the practical application of our great distinctive national idea – universal suffrage, I hope that we will unanimously adopt the resolution before us, thereby consolidating ourselves as the Association American for Equal Rights.

Although he formed the American Equal Rights Association with black activists like Douglass, there was constant tension within the group over its priorities. Anthony and Douglass had a decades-long friendship that was also plagued by disagreements. On the one hand, black women were ignored in AERA activism, according to history teacher Lisa Tetrault.

He AERA it dissolved in 1869 over disagreements over whether to support the 15th Amendment, which gave black men the right to vote. In fact, Antonio was among the suffragettes who made No support the 15th Amendment.

In a 1868 speech Before a group of black men, Anthony opposed the amendment because if voting “is an inalienable right, it is as much a right of the black woman as of the white woman. And it cannot be asked of any class of men.” , without asking for it for all the women who are deprived of it.”

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