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U.S. History 1877-Present 5: Racism in the Women's Suffrage Movement 260 Views
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Description:
Today's lesson is about racism during the women's suffrage movement. For whatever reason, many women's suffragists didn't support the suffrage of black women. We're hoping it's just because of the South's tendency to freak out whenever that sort of topic came up...
Transcript
- 00:03
We don't want to take away from the accomplishments of Alice [Person takes women's rights trophy away]
- 00:06
Paul and all the other suffragists that got the job done but it's not accurate
- 00:11
to make it seem like the women's movement was one big happy family
- 00:14
without any prejudices of its own here's a fun quote from Alice Negro women would [Alice talking]
- 00:21
not if women were to vote in the nation egg and we're not in Wonderland anymore
Full Transcript
- 00:27
they're Toto just pretend that's how the reference goes okay anyway point is that
- 00:32
for all her feminist radicalism Alice Paul herself either Harvard or at least
- 00:37
tolerated racist prejudices and she wasn't alone plenty of other white women
- 00:41
in the movement felt the same way even among the suffragettes who did not
- 00:45
personally discriminate against other races or ethnicities few activists were
- 00:49
willing to unite openly with black women so how could Paul and other white [Suffragettes appear]
- 00:54
women's libbers be so hypocritical how could they not see that black women were
- 00:58
experiencing similar and in fact worse discrimination than white women well
- 01:03
first of all there was the politics of the whole thing northern white women
- 01:06
were afraid they ticked off southern white women in the movement they were
- 01:10
also afraid that fighting directly for black women would be too much for the [Person appears with USA flag for face and tablet of black and women's rights pill]
- 01:14
country to swallow all at once because when it came to black right America had
- 01:19
an unfortunately strong gag reflex and of course there were also the more [USA taking pill]
- 01:23
obvious reasons some of these white women's livers well they were just
- 01:27
straight-up racist Jim Crow and less obvious discrimination had placed blacks
- 01:31
in poverty all over the country this of course caused a cycle that resulted in
- 01:36
low rates of education and an extreme lack of opportunity so when black people [Black family in prison]
- 01:40
filled the prison white people used this as proof that they were inherently a bad [Black prisoners working outdoors]
- 01:45
and inferior people don't get us wrong the 19th amendment did give every woman
- 01:49
the right to vote even black women so even though white women's libbers didn't
- 01:54
really fight for black women they didn't outright stop their progress either but
- 01:58
the struggle for black women to vote wasn't truly over they still weren't at
- 02:01
the point where they could just stroll into their local voting spot pick up [Mary Church walks to building to vote]
- 02:05
their American flag sticker and go home like black men they still had to battle
- 02:09
discriminatory laws and even physical violence in or [Mary stood in front of hurdles]
- 02:12
vote so it was kind of hard for black women to get super excited about their
- 02:16
newly gained right what good is a right when the right to exercise it is denied
- 02:21
you like somebody saying a congratulations you now have the right
- 02:25
to run around the yard but will shoot you if you walk through the door yeah [Woman approaches door and man points gun]
- 02:29
it's indoor playtime seem like a much better option no matter how appealing
- 02:32
that yard looks
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