Unfree KAL White Feminism Case Study: Voting Rights

Rachel

15 Mar 2025 • 3 min read

"Prior to white male support of suffrage for black men, white women activists had believed it would further their cause to ally themselves with black political activists, but when it seemed black men might get the vote while they remained disenfranchised, political solidarity with black people was forgotten and they urged white men to allow racial solidarity to overshadow their plans to support black male suffrage." - bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman

As mentioned briefly in last week’s post, the Women’s Suffrage movement is a sterling example of white feminism in action, and thus voting rights will be our first of four case studies. Most likely, in school you learned of Susan B. Anthony as an abolitionist and suffragette, who led the charge to secure women the vote in the late 1800’s. What you likely did not learn, however, was how she opposed the 15th Amendment giving black men the right to vote, telling Frederick Douglass, “if you will not give the whole loaf of suffrage to the entire people, give it to the most intelligent first. If intelligence, justice, and morality are to have precedence in the government, let the question of women brought up first and that of the negro last” [1]. Anthony and other white suffragettes fought hard to suppress the black vote, and even presented the white woman vote as a tool for further suppression. Alongside Jeanette Rankin’s argument to Congress (given in last week’s post), another white suffragette, Belle Kearney, called black Americans “illiterate and semi-barbarous,” argued that giving women the vote would lead to “durable white supremacy,” and stated that “of all the women in the South who can read and write, ten out of every eleven are white” [2]. Despite many black suffragettes working at the front lines to help secure voting rights, they were excluded from marches and public-facing positions to the extent that Sojourner Truth delivered a speech at the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention asking, “What's [intellect] got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?” [3]

Indeed, when women were given the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment, that right did not truly extend to black Americans in much of the United States. Poll taxes and literacy requirements put voting out of reach for many, and when those put the vote out of reach for white men as well, additional clauses were enacted to re-enfranchise the white voters only. For example, in 1989 Louisiana added to their constitution what came to be known as a “grandfather clause,” which stated that “No male person who was on January 1st, 1867, or at any date prior thereto, entitled to vote under the Constitution or statutes of any State of the United States…and no son or grandson of any such person…shall be denied the right to register and vote in this State by reason of his failure to possess the educational or property qualifications prescribed by this Constitution” [4]. These clauses were necessary to ensure white men still had the ability to vote, given how difficult the literacy tests were, an example of which can be seen here.

In modern days, literacy tests and poll taxes have been removed but that does not mean everybody has equal voting rights. A common tactic to suppress votes from anybody not white is voter ID laws. a study in 2020 from the American National Election Studies found that while 2.3% of white citizens of voting age lacked a photo ID, 6.2% of black and 6.1% of Hispanic citizens of voting age lack a photo ID [5]. The cost and time associated with securing an ID, as well as the difficulty in compiling the documentation necessary to secure your first ID, puts this requirement out of reach for many — predominantly poor black and Hispanic citizens.

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