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U.S. History 1877-Present Videos 173 videos

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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...

Language:
English Language

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

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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