In the year leading up to the passage of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States, a coalition formed among Black civil rights advocates, white abolitionists, and the women’s rights movement. It was a supergroup of activists — Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone — all aligned and working together toward freedom and abolition.
After the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865, however, the coalition began to crack.
Douglass had long believed that there would never be equality in the South, that Black Americans would never be treated as equal citizens or receive equal protection, until they had the right to vote. Then, they could establish political power centers to negotiate economic rights, edu- cation, and more.
At the same time, women’s suffrage advocates were also calling for the right to vote, but they began to see momentum shift toward giving Black males the right first. The arguments between the two factions intensified. Suffragists Anthony and Stanton drew criticism for accepting funding from George Francis Train, a wealthy philanthropist who saw women’s suffrage as a way to contain the political power of Blacks. Meanwhile, Douglass, who sup- ported universal rights for women, argued that the right to vote was more crucial for Black men.
The disagreement came to a head at the annual meet- ing of the American Equal Rights Association on May 12, 1869. After Stanton and Anthony made their case that educated white women deserved the right to vote before Black men did, Douglass stood up to address the crowd.
Richmond Law professor Kurt Lash has crafted the authoritative collection of documents related to the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. This feature, which details his process for producing the two-volume, 1,300-page collection, appeared in the winter 2022 issue of Richmond Law Magazine.