Transcripts For CSPAN3 Suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton Race 20240713

Professor free cites numerous examples of Elizabeth Cady stanton using racist rhetoric in her newspaper writings of the period, arguing that she used racism in an effort to attract allies in a fight to gain Voting Rights for white women only. The Womens Rights National Historical Park in seneca falls, new york is the host of this event. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is andrea. Superintendents of Womens Rights National Historical Park and Harriet Tubman National Historical park over in auburn. On behalf of the National Parks service it is my pleasure to welcome all of you here to your part. Before we start, i want to ask that everybody please silence of their cell phones so that our camera crew does not get disrupted. It is my delight to introduce you to our speaker dr. Laura free. Professor associate of history at hobart and William Smith colleges. Her work focuses on the interconnections of gender, race and politics in 19thcentury united states. Her most recent book, and the books on which this program is based is titled suffrage reconstructed race and civil rights. Please join me in welcoming dr. Laura free. [applause] prof. Free good afternoon, thank you. I am really honor to be here today. It is always a great thrill for a historian and of suffrage to speak at seneca falls. I would like to acknowledge that we are on the traditional lands of the hopi nations people and pay my respect to the elders, past and present. I would like to thank you for inviting me and setting up my visit. I would like to recognize and thank the many park rangers who do the work of on the spot history and share this special place with so many visitors. I would like to thank the park staff who maintain and clean the physical facilities of theirs and all other National Parks, whose work too often goes acknowledged. I am guessing that if you are here today you know who this is. This is Elizabeth Cady stanton. You see her with her longterm partner in activist work susan , b. Anthony. You probably already know a bit about her. You are probably aware she said controversial things over the course of her long activist career. She said that married women should be able to own their own property. A radical idea. She argued that women should not have to wear constricting corsets, a metal cage and 20 something pounds of long heavy , skirts if they did not wish to. She believed that the christian bible was problematic for women, and she reenvisioned its language and abducted its text to be more gender inclusive. This was incredibly radical. Even for today. She argued that the activities and minds of all people should not be defined, nor confined by their gender identity. And yet, these controversial ideas arent the only ones stanton held. Throughout her life and most vocally and dramatically in the period between 18671869, stanton repeatedly proclaimed that a conviction persons class and race both defined and confined them. She wrote and published a statement that stereotyped africanamericans, asian americans, irishamericans, poor americans and all immigrants depicting them as , inferior intellectually to white upperclass american women like herself. Let me read you just one example. This was taken from a speech she gave in january of 1869 while congress was considering the 15th amendment to the constitution, which says the right to vote should not be restricted by race. She says, if american women find it hard to bear the oppressions of their own facts and fathers, the best order of manhood, what may they not be called to endure when all the lower orders of foreigners, now crowding our shores, legislate for them and their daughters . Sick of patrick and sambo, and not know the difference between a monarchy and a republic, who cannot read a sentence in the declaration of independence or websters spelling book, making laws for Lucretia Mott or an ae dickinson. It is an open, deliberate insult to american womanhood to be cast down under the iron heeled andantry of the old world of the slaves of the new. This is truthfully among some of the more mildly racist things she said. I will get to the darker stuff shortly. This is not simply an artifact of her moment, a common reflection of the background racism that permeated and still permeates American Culture as some people have suggested. In fact, when stanton was at her worst, numerous contemporary colleagues both black and white called her out for her races up and her elitism. We have to understand that stanton made the deliberate choice again and again and again, to write and publish explicitly racist statements and ideas. In so doing, she threw away decades of intersectional alliances and friendships all in order to advocate for the votes of white women and white women only. Statements like this one, as well as many other place racist speech and racist ideas at the heart of the womens Suffrage Movement. This practice carried through in powerfully exclusionary ways into the 20th century. There are many stories i could tell to illustrate this but here is just one brief example of how racism in the Suffrage Movement operated well beyond stantons time. In 1915, the Suffrage Movement was organizing a massive parade, think of the womens march and in washington, d. C. But when africanamerican suffragists in the Alpha Suffrage Club in chicago, who had been working for decades for suffrage, and included antilynching advocate ida wells, when the club was asked to participate in the parade, they were told that they were only welcome at the end, at the back of the parade. This was the movements equivalent of the bus. This is only one of many incidents and ideas and moments that make it abundantly clear that racism was endemic throughout the womens Suffrage Movement. It is one of many incidents that illustrates how much the movement focused exclusively on the interest and needs of white women only. So all of this may or may not be news to you. It certainly is not news to historians of womens suffrage and all of the parks staff who are here today. Nor is it news to people of color, who have been for decades, calling out the legacy of racism in feminist movements. That said, openly and explicitly and widely acknowledging the racism of the feminist foremothers has not been a consistent part of our popular narrative about the Suffrage Movement. I think thats a problem. I hope by the end of my talk today you will think that is a. Roblem,too i would like to walk you through some of the ways that i have been thinking about this issue lately, and hopefully offer you some tools, some from historians like me and some from unlikely sources, the tools for helping us to grapple with our complicated, always messy and often ugly past. My talk is divided into three sections. First, i am going to offer some intraoperative framework for helping us think about stantons racism. Then i want to lay out why i think she turned to racism as a political tool. Then i want to share some ideas about ways to talk about and think about racism within the context of the 19th amendment centennial. So, given her racism, stanton poses a problem for us. Mainly because i do not think we can deny that she was a advocate a passionate advocate for human equality. She spent half a century using her profound intellect and her back power with words working to transform the ways that americans thought about and acted upon gender in law, ideology, religion, politics and culture. We cannot simply reject her legacy as tainted and ignore her as a figure in early feminism. So what do we do . How do we hold onto both stantons racism and her equal rights activism . I would like to begin by offering my answer to this admittedly thorny problem with two ways of thinking about it. One comes from improvisational theater via feminist committee and tina fey, feminist comedian, tina fey, and the other from my discipline of history. These two things are pretty far from each other so bear with me. First improv, in tina feys memoir, a title that i think could be great for a stanton biography, she says that one of the most important rules of improvisational comedy is that you never say no to an idea that someone has raised in an improv situation. Instead you say, yes, and. Then you begin to build on that idea. So if youre improv partner ,ays, i am a bear, you do say no. You say, yes, and lets go eat those hikers, they look delicious. Some Business Leadership seminars had taken up the ideas of yes, and, and used it as a critical tool for guiding Difficult Conversations and disagreements in the workplace. A conversation in the office might go Something Like this a person number 1 might say here , is my idea for the company. Person number two, instead of saying yes, but and laying out the problems the idea might have should say instead yes, and we , might want to think about these other things. This both validates of the original idea and offers input as a supplement, rather than a critique. Yes, and is even entering into our popular lexicon. This graffiti is a judge. This recently appeared on a bridge between my house and my Daughter School in ithaca, ripping on the ithaca local slogan of ithaca is gorgeous. Instead it says ivanka is ithaca is yesanding. Apparently it is getting around. How is this relevant for stanton . If we asked the question is stanton a racist, two very common responses that i have heard personally are no, or mike yes, but. But i dont think either of these work as a for filling answer to the question. Those who answer no, willfully and harmfully ignore the evidence. Those who say yes, but and then proceed to explain away what she said and did and why the belie the significance of her racism, shot people of color out of the conversation about the history of womens Voting Rights, and persistently defend stanton for what is ultimately indefensible. I think the real answer is yes, and. Y says that if you answer something with yes, and you then have some responsibility to contribute, to add something to the conversation. Here is where my historical training kicks in. I dont think it is enough for us to say stanton is a racist and dismiss her work and ideas. Thats not useful. I think instead, we have an obligation to contribute to the discussion. To help us better understand stanton, her ideas, motivation s and her worldview, even if and perhaps because we feel uncomfortable with it and find. T different than our own this is very much in keeping in line with the purpose of history. Historians seek to understand the people in the past where they were. We try to understand why they made the choices that they did and what cultural, political and social influences may have shaped those choices. For it is in assessing those choices that we figure out who we are in relationship to the past and we better refine and define our own values and ideas. So i would like to suggest, that if we think about stantons racism through the yes, and model it helps us to contextualize her ideas and enables us both to hold her accountable for her action and better understand the womans Suffrage Movement more broadly, as well as how that movement shaped our present moment. It is not enough merely to dismiss her, we have an obligation to engage. For the rest of my talk i would share my answers to the yes, and like to engage and share my answers to the yes, and question. In particular, by contextualizing stantons racism in the 1860s, showing how she deliberately wielded racist language for partisan and political purposes, and by showing you how the language fit in with a broader culture of Party Politics in the civil war era. And finally, by discussing some of the consequences of that race speech for the womens Rights Movement in the 1860s and beyond. Before i move on, a quick note about language and a warning about some of the images used in the presentation. While i will repeat some of the racist language as written to be , quoting directly here to be true to historical sources, in the interest in keeping with current antiracist practice i nwordt say that a out loud, merely replacing it with that term. There are two sides in the presentation that use very racist imagery from the documents. There is a brief description in the talk of a Sexual Assault and murder. I encourage you all to practice good selfcare if these things are triggering for you. The first thing i want to do in the rest of the talk is laid out what is going on for stanton in the 1860s to help us think about why it is for most troubling racist statements emerge in this period. In particular i want to ask, was on earth is going on with her and with her political world around her that made her think that racist ideas and racist speech might be a good idea at this point in time. We know, of course, that stanton had been engaged in womens rights activism consistently from 1848 onward. But during the civil war, northern womens rights activists agreed to set aside their equality claims in order to work for abolition. Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner even credited the antislavery petition that stanton susan b. Anthony , and lucy stone collected with tipping the political balance in congress for the 13th amendment abolishing slavery. They were working in alliance with republicans, with the Republican Party in congress to get rid of slavery in the united states. Because of this work, stanton believed that the work she provided the party in that period would translate to womens equality after the war, it kind of political rate per quote, standard political quid pro quo, standard in american politics then and now. Im going to posit explain a little bit about american Party Politics in case youre unfamiliar with it. At this point in time the Republican Party is the more socially liberal party and the Democratic Party is the more socially conservative. That will flip in the 1940s with the emergence of Franklin Delano roosevelts new deal. ,ut in this time period republicans are more socially liberal, and democrats are more socially conservative. Just keep that in mind when i talk about republicans and democrats going forward. Had done somenton important work during the civil war, or veteran helped the Republican Party achieve their goal of abolition, she really believed that republicans would turn around and support equality for all women. And truthfully, the immediate postcivil war period did look particularly hopeful for womens rights. It required a wideranging assessment of political citizenship. Should southern white men who had just made more of the nation return to full citizenship and voting . What about formerly enslaved people . These are all open questions that are being talked about and written about throughout the reconstruction period. Between 1865 in 1866, questions were openly debated by members in congress. In particular, republicans, looking to protect the power and the newly emancipated people in the south, sought to accomplish both by giving southern black men a ballot. In light of these political shifts, she reasons that this was the optimal time to push for the enfranchisement of all women. But what stanton had not reckoned on or what she wildly underestimated, was the power that gender wielded in the politics of reconstruction. Consistently, throughout the immediate postwar period, republicans relied heavily on genderbased arguments in franchising southern africanamerican men. In particular, republicans echoing arguments made by male activists themselves, cleaned that black men had earned their manhood on the field of battle in the civil war. As men africanamerican men should possess a ballot as do all other adult men in america. Stanton worked to persuade republicans that women need the needed the ballot as urgently as southern black men. Especially through a Petition Campaign in 1866 that was similar to the one she spearheaded during the war. Stanton hoped to shift republicans towards womens Voting Rights. The Republicanled Congress to thehe word male second section of the 14th amendment to define voters. This added gender specific language to the constitution for the first time. It was a crushing blow and a deliberate and explicit rejection of stantons claim and ideas. As the postwar years went on, stanton suffered further losses to her cause. First, new york, her home state repudiated woman suffrage in , the 1867 constitutional convention. Although stanton had personally appeared before the convention Suffrage Committee to argue for womens right to vote, the committee rejected the argument by saying that womens franchise meant would involve , transformations so radical in social and domestic life, but no new yorker would accept it. The last straw for stanton happened in kansas. In 1868, legislators in kansas had proposed a referendum on the fall ballot. One enfranchising black men and one emfranchising all women. Excited by the possibility that midwesterners might see the value of women as voters, stanton and anthony both went to kansas and spent a month on a statewide speaking tour on trying to make their case directly to the kansan voter. Were soundlyrenda defeated when the election took place. Discouraged, brokenhearted, and feeling abandoned by allies in the east and west, and running low on funds, stanton and anthony then got an offer they couldnt refuse. It came from an extremely unlikely source, from a democrat. So here again, remember, in the 19th century republicans are , socially liberal and democrats are conservative. The best way i can think of to explain how shocking this offer would be in contemporary terms, would be if the president s staunchest supporters helped to undocumented immigrants apply for obamacare. Thats how out of the norm this offer was. Improbable to say the least. So who was this democrat, and why did he help stanton and anthony . Was George Francis train, a railroad financier, wealthy enough to be funny his own private run for the presidency. Sound familiar . Even back then, millionaires and billionaires could dive into president ial elections. Train had come to kansas to support his president ial campaign and to stump the state for womens votings rights. He spoke alongside stanton and anthony in some events and apparently he liked what he heard. So, in november of 1867, after the defeat of the referenda, he offered to fund it womens rights newspaper for stanton and anthony to manage. They embraced the support wholeheartedly. It is hard to underestimate the importance of a newspaper to the suffragists at this point. Provide them with an independent public voice, give them control over their message, and potentially map the publicity for the movement. Moreover, as one historian has argued, it would have provided the young womens Rights Movement with a steady source of funding, independent from republican or abolitionist sources, something that the movement desperately needed. Point, newspapers are big money at this point in the 19th century. Its like handing somebody a. Com startup in the 1990s. This could potentially be big money for them. But stanton and anthonys decision to accept trains money was a decidedly controversial move. Train, aside from being a wealthy, political semicelebrity, was also unapologetically racist. He had come to kansas explicitly to argue that expanding the franchise include africanamerican men would require the inclusion of white women to create a balance in the political community. Womens first and negro last is my program, he said, envisioning here that all women were right. Many of stanton and anthonys long allies rejected this and soundly criticized them for their willingness to accept his help. Here is an example. In a letter to anthony, abolitionist leader William Lloyd garrison wrote i cannot , refrain from expressing my regret and astonishment that you havers. Stanton should taken leave of good sense and departed so far from respect as to travel to that crack brained her loo harlequin and semilunatic george train. All that is speak for what are you doing. He delights during the charges upon the nword ad nauseum. He may be of use in drawing an audience, but so would a guerrilla, kangaroo or hippopotamus. [laughter] scarce on theeing ground in 1867, all stanton and anthony saw was the opportunity train offered for their newspaper. Newspaper and they proceeded to publish it with trains funding. They said its purpose was to revolutionize, as it advocated for educated suffrage, irrespective of sex or color equal pay for women for equal , work imagine that eight hours of labor, abolitionist standing parties. Down with politicians the first issue proclaimed, and up with the people. Even back then americans hated their politicians. But its in the pages of the revolution that stanton articulated a very exclusive vision of the people. Saying some of the most blatantly racist things in her career in its pages. Why did stanton turned to racism in the pages of the revolution to argue for womens Voting Rights when she had not done so widely or openly before . What prompted her to make this choice . The answer, i think, lies in Party Politics. During this time, stanton carefully and deliberately appropriated the racist partisan political rhetoric of the 19thcentury Democratic Party. I think she did so in order to attract democrats to the cause of white womens Voting Rights. In other words stanton did not , just pull her racist language from thin air. Point for point the arguments that she made that are most to us and to her contemporaries were taken directly from Democratic Party language and Democratic Party ideas from the 19th century. Earlier, the Democratic Party in the 19thcentury century was the most socially conservative. Its constituents were mostly drawn from rural white farmers urbans working and , lower class farms, as well as european immigrants. Many of whom were openly hostile to africanamericans. This period, democrats defined themselves as the party of the wegmans government. They did this openly, not with dog whistle language, but very deliberately, as you can see here in Campaign Materials from 1869. Throughout reconstruction, democrats racism can be seen particularly clearly in congress , when democratic members sought to oppose the passage of the 14th amendment, fearing that it would grant full social equality to all africanamericans. In particular, Congressional Democrats argued three things about Voting Rights. All of which had implications for white women. First they contended that voting was not a natural right to which all citizens were entitled. Second, they argued that whiteness was an essential and necessary quality for a voter to process. For a voter to possess. And third, they argued that if africanamerican men were given a ballot, it would endanger america and americans. I want to break these arguments down for you and give you some examples from the congressman themselves. In 1865ional democrats to 1866 argued primarily that voting was not an inherent right belonging to all americans. To make this argument they looked to women. Because women did not vote, democrats claimed suffrage must therefore be neither a natural right nor a right t of citizenship. Representative john taylor of new york argued that a right to vote is not an inalienable right, it is not a natural right at all. Women, minors and aliens are excluded from its exercise, yet no disgrace is attached to them nor is any injustice committed on them. It is rather he said, for women, an honor to them that they suffer this constraint which sweetens liberty. Democrats were not so bold as to argue that the lack of the ballot sweetened liberty for africanamerican men. They did, however, reject the idea that black men working people of possessing political privileges, even if they admitted that they might be entitled to basic civil rights. And they grounded this argument in racism. You can see here again terribly , a racist image from Democratic Party campaign material. Here is an example of the argument. On june 16, 1866, indianas representative william my block declared, the negro race is inferior to the white race, and anything like social and political inequality between the two races is neither practical or desirable to senator James Doolittle of wisconsin echoed this argument. We are caucasian and represent that race from history, from our education, from our experience. Every man of age of the caucasian race in this country as a general rule is competent. Whiteness equals competence here, that is what he is saying. When a man tells a that the africans in this country, just set free from the plantations, are also competent to exercise their right of suffrage, he states, it is abhorrent to my sense of justice and propriety. Grounding the right to vote in a racist interpretation of people. Depicting africanamerican men as an educated at best and inherently intellectually, deficient at worst democrats and drew on americans fears about the safety of the democracy. They claimed that the extreme danger would result if the ballot were extended to a black man. Indiana representative michael kerr argued that not only was the nations safety threatened by africanamerican , but thatanchisement whiteness would be endangered by black voters. He said by the enfranchisement comes the africanized, mexican ized, and all of our national and purposeful individuality gives place to anarchy and weakness. So, whiteness itself is threatened by black male voters. Given the recent civil war, i think democrats are trying to tap into fears about national safety. In light of this, they argued that not only was america in danger, but that the newly reunited nation could not handle a dangerous political poison that black voters would be, as they claimed. Kentuckyerek davis of asserted that negro suffrage is political arsenic. The political prosperity and freedom of a country depend upon the homogeneous miss of its people. But in our country race of , a people that is inferior to the caucasian race in the moral structure, and that no cultivation can bring to an approximation of high standards should never have political power conferred upon if the presence of africanamerican men in the body of politics would threaten national safety, democrats also claim that individual black male voters would threaten the personal safety of american voters. This is where it gets really ugly. In particular, democrats asserted that the safety of white women was determined by drawing onhisement, a substantially helping to reinforce the myth of a black rapist on the pennsylvania democrat, arguing that if africanamerican men were allowed to vote, then women would be endangered by this problem. Sorry, ive lost my place. Give me a moment. There we go. Ok, so while making the argument about the potential danger of black men as voters, some democrats, and heres where he it gets kind of interesting. Some democrats sacrifice their gender roles to argue that Voting Rights and whiteness were so connected that white women would be better and safer voters than black man. So, for example, Pennsylvania Democratic benjamin suggested that given republican arguments, then white women should perhaps vote. He said if the negro has a natural right to vote because he is an inhabitant of the community perfecting to be a republican, then women should vote for the same reason. Some of the reformers do say that after the negro will become will come the women. Here again, imagining that all the women are white. Right question mark right . Other democrats deemed white women voters explicitly worthy because of their whiteness. In december of 1866, the pennsylvania senator suggested that educated white women as voters would be a viable solution to the problem of dangerous black male voters. I say you have not demonstrated it is safe to give the ballot to black men, but republicans are determined to do it and i want to prolong that doubtful element, that ignorant element, the element just emerged from slavery, i want you it into thewith ballot box to neutralize its poison, if poison the danger there be, to correct the danger of the female element of the country. Here again, black women are not a part of the equation. So theyre willing to sacrifice [no audio] so to reason with minority democrats, i argue that stanton began to echo democratic partisan rhetoric, and in so doing, used in racism to advance the claims of white women to the ballot. First, just like democrats, stanton occasionally deemed black men too ignorant to deem the ballot and protested them to the political status above that of educated white women like universal suffrage is safe, she said. Take said suffrage to it ignorant manhood is to dethrown the queen of the moral universe and subjugate loyalty to brute force. In claiming that womens votes could protect the nation, it stantons language hinted at the final insidious democratically influenced argument, that giving black men the ballot would result in the endangerment of white women. Then the argument became explicit. Disparaging the passage of black males in washington, d. C. , suffrage rights, stanton stated that in removing all political disabilities from the male citizens of the district, congress has established a government based on the aristocracy of sex, invading, as it does our homes, desecrating our family altars, and subjugate subjugating everywhere moral power in brute force. While desecrate and invade our aggressive, subjugate means to conquer and bring under the power of another to make submissive. In how many contexts could a black man subdue a white woman . In the same issue, stanton articulated her meaning in less than oblique terms. Just as the democratic why created the antagonism, the republican cry of manhood suffrage creates an antagonism between black men and all women that will culminate in fearful outrages on womanhood, especially in the southern states. Just as democrats utilize the myth of black men being unworthy voters, stanton also drew on this fiction to create a reason for white women voting to carry carried sufficient, emotional power. Stanton and anthony have long understood that white womens claim to the ballot lacked the urgency that could be claimed by black southern men. Without the immediate and palpable threat of violence against white women to push their suffrage argument, violence that black men and women were experiencing in the south at the time, the claims of white women lacked political and moral power. But suggesting that white women were endangered by black male voters went to the need for protection with the ballot. This was the ugliest moment in stantons personal political rhetoric. In making this argument, she grounded Voting Rights in a racist myth that was ultimately responsible for the violent murders of thousands of black americans, as it was used from the 1860s onward to justify lynching. We cannot hear or read these words without condemning stanton for writing them. In so doing, we would not be alone. Stantons racist appeal to the democrats alienated many of her former allies. It was a key factor in driving suffrage activists like Frederick Douglass and Francis Harper to reject stanton and anthony, and to form the american women suffrage association, which supported in franchising black men first and afterwards, working on giving the ballot for all women. The same time, stanton and anthony formed the National Womens Suffrage Movement, which insisted on franchising women immediately. This put africanamerican women activists, of who many were involved with the movement at this point, in a particularly untenable position. Some africanamerican women suffragists like Sojourner Truth supported stanton and anthonys the needion, seeing for franchise meant of all women at this moment. Others allied with the american women suffrage organization. But mostly at this point, black women looked to and created organizations to advocate for their own equality. White suffragists were badly divided. Animosity between the two groups persisted for over 20 years before they united to form the National American suffrage in association in 1890. This was one of the critical consequences of stantons racist turn, but perhaps it was the least serious. More troubling was the way that stantons choices wrote black women out of this suffragist citizenship. In her model, black women occasionally appealed, but only as foils for her argument, that franchising black men harmed all women. Instead, she conceptualized all citizens as either all white or all male. Her legacy was a tradition of exclusion that would be carried into the 20th century Suffrage Movement and into american feminism more broadly. And finally, i think stantons racism privileged expediency over what was right. She knowingly compromised principles of equality and the in the hopes that it would pay off, politically. The cost of the strategy were heavy indeed. Well, i dont think we would be inclined to forgive stanton for her racism even if all women were enfranchise at that point, but it seems particularly sad that for all of that, for all the moral compromise and ugliness it generated, democrats in the 1860s were no more interested in giving white women the ballot than republicans. Democrats found the idea of white women voters is politically useful in that it supported the racist opposition to black mens Voting Rights, but they were not interested in giving women the right to vote. So, what do we do with this knowledge . How do we hold on to the image of stanton as a passionate advocate for equality and to the knowledge that she willingly wielded racism as a political weapon when she felt it was useful . First of all, i think we cannot simply dismiss or ignore stantons racism. Nor can we simply dismiss or ignore her as a key figure in the Early Movement because we find her racism reprehensible. We have to, i think, do our best to recognize both, the fact that she was problematic and the fact that she was also a passionate advocate for equality. I think that if we truly want to understand stanton in acknowledging her racist language means more than simply labeling her a racist and walking away. It means that we must recognize that she was a supreme opportunist who sought to take advantage of political openings when she saw them, doing so by any means necessary. However nasty. This certainly is not laudable, but it might be something we recognize as just a strategic decision, given her political context. Not saying we should approve, just saying we should understand. Here again, i would turn to someone else to offer us a useful framework for helping us to understand stanton. His most recent book, how to be an antiracist, the historian explicitly defines racist as one who supports a racist policy through their actions or inactions, or expressing a racist idea. By this definition, there is no doubt that stanton was a racist. But he argues that the opposite isnt not racist, that an attempt to take a neutral stance in the face of racism is to support racist policy or ideas. He says you either support racist policy or you oppose it. Those who oppose racist policies are antiracist. And heres the thing. For kendi, racists and antiracists are not permanent identities. They are choices. One has to choose to be an antiracist, and its an ongoing choice. It cannot be made just once, but it requires choosing again and again to oppose policies that devalue human equality. He says, racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be racist one minute and antiracist the next. What we say about race and do about race in each moment determines what, not who we are. Heres where i think kendi can help us understand stanton. In 1860, she supported racist ideas and policies. But in other moments before and after, she actively pursued policies that were antiracist. Shes moving back and forth between these positions. So i guess what im suggesting is that saying stanton was a racist is not the right question. Did she say racist things . Yes. Did she say things that help to maintain the oppression of people based on skin color, absolutely. But i think a more fruitful question is why she made those choices in that moment and a better use of the frameworks are to try to identify moments where shes supporting racist policies and moments where shes not. Kendis racist and antiracist model. Thinking about it this way, and approaching the problem of stantons racism, without sympathy for her means but striving to understand her motives, i think we can come to a richer and more nuanced understanding of this compelling and complex feminist foremother as a political actor. And this is essential, i think, because one of the key dangers of commemoration in general, when we see right now that were struggling with nationally on civil war monuments is a tendency for us to mythologize heroes beyond the facts of the there their deeply flawed human lives. We want to believe our heroes to be perfect, free from ugly limitations that are all too common among our leaders in ourselves. And so we separate what we idolize about the person than the actual facts of their lives. But if we embrace the whole story of our heroes in the past , it can disrupt our blind belief in the perfection and help us to avoid troubling inaccurate mythmaking. It enables us to instead recognize the reality of how people engage with the past. And i think it ultimately strengthens our own values and goals by marking the points where we diverge from our heroes. We need to recognize and own and acknowledge and take responsibility for stantons racism, and we need to remember her as a key player in womens rights activism. We need to call her out for her failures, particularly the ones with such significant and lasting consequences. And we should appreciate the radical and important nature of her other work. We need to identify and recognize clearly moments when she was making racist choices and moments when she was making antiracist choices. Particularly, i think as we commemorate the 19th amendment over the course of this year, it is going to be really important to hold onto both of these ideas. Well to recognize the significance of the amendment but we also need to hold onto the fact that the 19th amendment did not enfranchise all women. All women did not get the right to vote until 1965 with the Voting Rights act. So, i think we need to think about stanton within this framework. We need to hold on to social racist and her antiracist ideas, and to answer any question about whether she was a racist with the notion of yes, and. Thank you. [applause] we have time to open it up for questions . We have time to open it up for questions. Absolutely. I have a question. Sure. I was wondering how her husband reacted to these kinds of things that she made . Prof. Free thats a really good question. I dont know if we have record of that. A better question is, i dont know about henry, that anthony but anthony is working alongside her at this time and anthony, while she does not make such awful statements as stanton does, sort of dabbles a little bit, as well, but never publicly refutes stanton. So the point to other people like stone and douglas and harper are calling out stanton, henry doesnt publicly refute her either at this point. Hes kind of embroiled in that the covering massive controversy with some corruption charges. Theres some fishy stuff going on at his job that his son got himself into. Hes busy. Hes in trouble at this point. Yeah, so hes not on the radar with this one. I could be wrong. Is there evidence she might have softened some of her racist views when she got older . Prof. Free later on, she made statements that were more eu leaders. She maintains her elitism. More elitist. She maintains her elitism. She feels personally affronted that wealthy white women like herself are not valued in society and on have access to the power that wealthy white men do. But she never again says such horrifyingly and explicitly violent and violently racist things. Yeah, it becomes more nuanced and more elitist, i would say. Yeah, again, which leads me back to the political rhetoric of the moment, right . At the point that it is less salient politically and nationally, at our think it makes sense for her to say those things publicly. It was ironic she said all these things right after the civil war. Prof. Free yeah, at a point where there is this moment where americans more broadly are saying, what does it look like to be american . Who gets to be a full american . Will we let the southerners who just made war on the nation become full americans again, what about formerly enslaved people . How do we recreate our community in the face of the shattering experience . So many of those questions are being circulated and so many people at that point are answering it in such a better way than stanton. So many people are saying this is a chance for a Broader Vision of quality and america thats more inclusive, and she opts for a different path. Yeah, a less inclusive vision. Any further questions . What do you take away from this in contemporary interpretation as far as, we are looking at stanton and trying to tease out what are the ways in which she can be emulated and ways she can be condemned, how do you see that complying to the contemporary narrative and helping people connect with the value of her efforts . Prof. Free i think first and foremost, we have to, in any situation when we are trying to hold stanton up as a hero, we have to acknowledge the complexity and the problems and the racism. We cant say stanton was a great feminist for mother without saying she also was racist. By doing that it is historically inaccurate and disingenuous. Does that cancel out the others . So. Free i dont think i dont think so. I think we should value her for her contributions. I dont think we need to idolize her. I dont think we need to idolize any person in the past. We need to understand people in the past is complex just like we are. It disempowers us as activists to think that people in the past were perfect. If we think that, im not perfect. Why should i engage in activist work . I work for antiracist policies because im not perfect like stanton. By acknowledging her imperfections, it can value the work she did and also recognize she was a Competent Person and leaves us with a problematic legacy. Does that sort of get at your question . Yeah. Im just curious about how they got along with all of them because they were abolitionist and quakers. I dont know how they all worked together to come up with the womens rights. Is there any way you can explain that . Prof. Free yeah, i think at the point there was a Broader Vision of what womens equality needed, about what the movement needed, there is lots of space for lots of people to come at that. For fighting for property rights, for education, all of the things that we see on the declaration, theres a broad vision of equality and a lot of people could participate in that. When it starts to narrow down to on the ballot, and thats something thats an artifact of reconstruction politics, the down thentry narrows ballot as the cureall as opposed to may be property redistribution or more equitable economic range. And narrow down to the vote and i think that is where it creates tension for a lot of people that stanton had allied with earlier in her career going forward. And a lot of the abolitionists say stanton, youre wrong on this. Was that mostly focused on antislavery and not necessarily equality . Selfworth or the worth of a human being . Prof. Free yeah, absolutely, and there were a good number of abolitionists who, after the civil war and 13th amendment were like, our work here is done and walked away. As opposed to really acknowledging the legacy of inequality and violence that slavery left that needed to be grappled with in order to bring africanamericans fully into American Life as citizens. And so those abolitionists, i think, were extraordinarily shortsighted in thinking about it and also probably harvard racist perspectives themselves at various points. A lot of people opposed slavery but didnt necessarily view of equality among all people as a goal for a value, yeah. Alright, any further questions . Prof. Free well, thank you all so much. It was a pleasure to be here. Great audience. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] youre watching American History tv, covering history cspan style with event coverage, eyewitness accounts, archival films, lectures in College Classrooms, and visits to museums and historic places. All weekend, every weekend on cspan3. On American History tv every saturday at 8 00 p. M. And midnight eastern, lectures and history takes you inside College Classrooms to learn about topics ranging from the American Revolution to 9 11. Heres a short look at one of our recent programs. Recap, the white house wasnt painted white to cover the burn marks because whitewash had been used before hand and had become the custom color. That was why people often referred to as the white house. Andrew jackson likely never planted the famed magnolia tree. Only later did an underground white house emerge beneath the building. They never put an alligator in the east room. Roosevelt never banned christmas trees. People have been the white house the White House Well before roosevelt ordered new stationary. And lincoln never slept in the bed named after him. But probably the biggest one, Dolley Madison did not save the painting by herself, but she ordered it to be saved and it was to the collective efforts of several people, including at least one enslaved man, paul jennings, that this was done. So what do these myths tell us about the white house . Now because of the white houses rich and deep history, the conditions are optimal for inventing the president ial and first lady, lauren legend. But as we see, history is often complicated and complex. Lectures and histories are featuring collegelevel american courses from institutions across the country. This coming week, with the house of representatives in recess, American History tv will be in prime time on cspan3. Join us for a week of distance learning, monday through friday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, 5 00 pacific. Presidency, wehe hear from emily voss about James Madisons role in shaping the constitution and the bill of rights and the influence of his study of history and previous political experiences. Miss voss is education director based at montpelier. The stock was part of the president s day symposium. We have a tradition here of hosting speakers for a special president s day program. And this year, we thought it would be a nice change and