← Back to the front page

The Dark Side of Great Historic Figures

Khalid Elhassan December 11, 2020 33 min

Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony - Elizabeth Cady Stanton — Susan B. Anthony, left, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. NJTV

32. From Early in the Struggle For Women’s Rights, There Was Tension Between the Motives of White and Black Suffragists

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony supported equality for women. In practice, they meant equality for white women. After the Civil War, while both black and white women sought the right to vote, they had different motives. Stanton and Anthony sought the vote as symbol and substance of parity with their husbands, brothers, and fathers.

Black suffragists sought the vote for both themselves and their menfolk, to empower black communities. Especially in the South, where recently emancipated blacks were subjected to a violent reign of racist terror to keep them subservient and dis-empowered.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.