Believe it or not, the anger among supporters of Hillary Clinton, who felt their presidential candidate was robbed of her rightful place on the Democratic ticket by the upstart Obama, is a show we’ve seen before.
It took place long before the days of YouTube and the 24 hour news cycle, long before anyone ever imagined a black man or a white woman would ever be on a presidential ticket of a major American political party.
It was in the days when neither blacks nor women had the right to vote, but had begun the long battle for universal suffrage. Both blacks and women would eventually get there, but not at the same time. And the fight led to a breach between two stalwarts of the 19th century civil rights movement, Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony.
Douglass, anti-slavery abolitionist, was a supporter of women’s right to vote, and he attended the famous Seneca Falls Women‘s Rights Convention. The passage of the 14th amendment to the Constitution in 1865 had given blacks their status U.S. citizens, and in combination with the abolition of slavery, they had begun the struggle for the right to vote.
By 1869, the long-time friends in the struggle Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony were on opposite sides of the debate because the 15th Amendment granted suffrage rights to blacks as males. Anthony questioned why women should support this amendment when black men were not continuing to show support for women’s voting rights. "When women because they are women are dragged from their homes and hung upon lampposts, .....then they will have the urgency to obtain the ballot," Douglass said. Despite Douglass’ obvious logic, that one didn’t go over big with Anthony.
In the end, it would not be until the 20th century that either women or African-Americans received full voting rights. Now, in the 21st century, Clinton putting cracks in a “glass ceiling”, and with Sen. Barack Obama poised to do what most of us could never have dreamed or imagined, the fight over who should be first is a strange echo of a distant past.
It took place long before the days of YouTube and the 24 hour news cycle, long before anyone ever imagined a black man or a white woman would ever be on a presidential ticket of a major American political party.
It was in the days when neither blacks nor women had the right to vote, but had begun the long battle for universal suffrage. Both blacks and women would eventually get there, but not at the same time. And the fight led to a breach between two stalwarts of the 19th century civil rights movement, Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony.
Douglass, anti-slavery abolitionist, was a supporter of women’s right to vote, and he attended the famous Seneca Falls Women‘s Rights Convention. The passage of the 14th amendment to the Constitution in 1865 had given blacks their status U.S. citizens, and in combination with the abolition of slavery, they had begun the struggle for the right to vote.
By 1869, the long-time friends in the struggle Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony were on opposite sides of the debate because the 15th Amendment granted suffrage rights to blacks as males. Anthony questioned why women should support this amendment when black men were not continuing to show support for women’s voting rights. "When women because they are women are dragged from their homes and hung upon lampposts, .....then they will have the urgency to obtain the ballot," Douglass said. Despite Douglass’ obvious logic, that one didn’t go over big with Anthony.
In the end, it would not be until the 20th century that either women or African-Americans received full voting rights. Now, in the 21st century, Clinton putting cracks in a “glass ceiling”, and with Sen. Barack Obama poised to do what most of us could never have dreamed or imagined, the fight over who should be first is a strange echo of a distant past.
