Glorious Fourth

“Woman suffrage,”; a question that has been agitated before the country, and a question involving, according to the last United States Census, the welfare of something more than one-half of the people of the United States. I think I speak advisedly when I call women “people,” but it has been frequently asserted on the floor of the Senate that they are not citizens, and the minute they are so adjudged they will be entitled to the ballot under the fourteenth article of the amendments to the Constitution.

“Woman suffrage,”; a question that has been agitated before the country, and a question involving, according to the last United States Census, the welfare of something more than one-half of the people of the United States. I think I speak advisedly when I call women “people,” but it has been frequently asserted on the floor of the Senate that they are not citizens, and the minute they are so adjudged they will be entitled to the ballot under the fourteenth article of the amendments to the Constitution.

The right to the ballot, the right to a voice in the matter of who shall rule over them, and how they shall be taxed has ever been considered as the crowning glory of men since the adoption of the Constitution. Women have, in addition to this, an earnest desire and interest as to how their homes and children shall be protected and their persons and property preserved.

We come to you as the English people appealed to King John of England, when they wrung from him that famous Bill of Rights, the Magna Charta, that formed not only the foundation or bulwark of English liberty, but which the colonists of this country insisted on embodying into our own laws and bills of rights when, with toil, privation, bravery, and blood, they settled this country, by landing in inhospitable, rock-bound New England, and undertook to make its soil productive.

Reforms do not go backward. Eminent speakers in our country are arousing the people of the States to the question of the civil and political equality of woman and the injustice to her of taxation without representation.

‘Taxation without representation
is tyranny; tell if you can
why women should not have the ballot
if taxed just the same as a man?
King George, you remember, denied us
the ballot, but sent the tea,
and we, without asking a question
just tumbled it into the sea.
Taxation without representation
is tyranny; just this is meant,
one person shall not rule another
except by that person’s consent.
It was this, in the logic of Lincoln
that served the proud Douglas to vex;
With them, it related to color,
With us, tis a question of sex.”

Because it yet remains to be demonstrated who gave to man his superiority, and the right to take from, or relegate rights to woman; the brother to dictate to the sister, the son to the mother. If woman is inferior to man why draw the line? You do not draw it on an inferior man unless he is an idiot. If it is because you do not wish to multiply votes, then draw the line at the adult son who lives at home, not on the mother and keeper of the home. Gentlemen you forget that the world moves, and that the educated, cultivated woman of to-day is not the woman of a century, or even a half century, ago, and that now the State university of the country is the daily press, from which every woman aspires to graduate.

The intelligent, educated women of this country should have as much right to practice law, medicine, or theology, enjoy the emoluments of office, vote and be voted for as the men. The rights of women are inherent in womanhood and in a republic the powers of the government inherent in the people. Are the women of today a part of the people?

Today we are coming up out of this condition of the superiority of brute force. into a condition that recognizes certain rights of humanity which have now become self-assertive, and which true manhood can no longer afford to ignore. Integrity and intelligence, virtue and morality, should constitute the civil service examination for statesmanship; and not wealth, sex or brawn and on these alone can be securely built on the pillars of a republic. If the women of this Country, the women of today are to have the ballot; as I believe they are, and as think they should have; they should accept it as a sacred trust, a weighty responsibility, and use that influence to have the noblest and best men and women occupy positions of trust, and be elevated to office. We want loyalty to the highest interest of the
masses of the people.

The narrow prejudices that have existed so long in this country with reference to the employment and vocation of women, and their seclusion from public life, pertain to a heathen age; - are a part of the superstitions and ignorance of the past, - something to be educated out of. Equal, and exact justice; and equal responsibility are alone expedient in legislation, and in society.

When men and women have advanced far enough to work side by side in the learned professions as well as in the other avocations of life, and stand as they should stand, as equals and partners in life’s contest, & in the struggle for development in the race of life, there will be but one code of morals for them both; and the standard that has hitherto been exacted of women, will be expected and demanded of men. When license ceases to be excusable in either sex we may hope for a generation of youth with a new code of morality; - one in which a pure woman may be able to select for her life companion an equally pure man, hitherto men have been asking of women what they never expected to give in return.

This woman movement opened the political door to the women of this country, and henceforth the woman in politics will be no more a novelty but one of the expected features of a campaign a potential element no longer to be ignored but one to be met and recognized. The woman of today has the grace of her Grandmother with the spirit of her Revolutionary sire. It is impossible to relegate her back to the Kitchen and the cradle. She has come to the front to stay.

Works Cited

Lockwood, Belva. “Statement before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Woman
Suffrage – March 3, 1908.” Archives of Women’s Political Communication.
Accessed June 6, 2023.
https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2020/04/10/statement-before-the-u-ssenate-select-committee-on-woman-suffrage-dec-3-1908/.

Lockwood, Belva. “Suffrage.” Home. Accessed June 6, 2023.
https://nyheritage.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16694coll8/id/2280/r
ec/9.

Lockwood, Belva. “Portions of Various Lectures.” p. 1-2, 13-15, 28, 42, 44-45.
Home. Accessed June 6, 2023.
https://nyheritage.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16694coll8/id/1960/r
ec/5.

One day while riding back to my school I took a seat in the ladies’ coach of the train as usual. There were no jim crow cars then.

When the train started and the conductor came along to collect tickets, he took my ticket, then handed it back to me and told me that he couldn’t take my ticket there. I thought that if he didn’t want the ticket, I wouldn’t bother about it so went on reading. In a little while when he finished taking tickets, he came back and told me I would have to go in the other car. I refused, saying that the forward car was a smoker, and as I was in the ladies’ car I proposed to stay. He tried to drag me out of the seat, but the moment he caught hold of my arm I fastened my teeth in the back of his hand.

I had braced my feet against the seat in front and was holding to the back, and as he had already been badly bitten, he didn’t try it again by himself. He went forward and got the baggageman and another man to help him and of course they succeeded in dragging me out. They were encouraged to do this by the attitude of the white ladies and gentlemen in the car; some of them even stood on the seats so that they could get a good view and continued applauding the conductor for his brave stand.

By this time the train had stopped at the first station. When I saw that they were determined to drag me into the smoker, which was already filled with colored people and those who were smoking, I said I would get off the train rather than go in which I did. Strangely, I held on to my ticket all this time, and although the sleeves of my linen duster had been torn out and I had been pretty roughly handled, I had not been hurt physically.

I went back to Memphis and engaged a colored lawyer to bring a suit against the railroad for me. After months of delay, I found he had been bought off by the road, and as he was the only colored lawyer in town, I had to get a white one. I can see to this day the headlines in the Memphis Appeal announcing DARKY DAMSEL GETS DAMAGES.

In 1913, at the Chicago Suffrage Parade, I stood in the center of the row, as a member of the Chicago Woman’s club and president of the Alpha Club, a suffrage organization of colored women.

The first hint that there was to be any discrimination against the colored women came when Mrs. Smith was putting the Illinois suffragists through their practice in the drill hall on the second floor of the suffrage parade headquarters. Mrs. Trout, who had been missing from the room for some minutes, came in hurriedly, held a short conference with Mrs. Smith, and then announced to the waiting women that it was a question whether I would march with her delegation. A murmur of excitement passed round the room and those standing near me kept an embarrassed silence.

“Many of the eastern and southern women have greatly resented the fact that there are to be colored women in the delegations,’ announced Mrs. Trout. ‘Some have even gone so far as to say they will not march if negro women are allowed to take part. The National Suffrage association and the woman in charge of the entire parade has advised us to keep our delegation entirely white. So far as Illinois is concerned, we should like to have Mrs. Wells march in the delegation, but if the national association has decided it is unwise to include the colored women, I think we should abide by its decision.”
She looked around for approval.

“You are right; it will prejudice southern people against suffrage if we take the colored women into our ranks,” said a Georgia woman and a sympathizer with the southern suffragists. “We should not go against the law of the national association. We are only a small part in the great line of march, and we must not cause any confusion by disobeying orders.”

“The southern women have tried to evade the question time and again by giving some excuse or other every time it has been brought up,’ I said. ‘If the Illinois women do not take a stand now in this great democratic parade, then the colored women are lost.”

Another woman spoke up, “We have come down here to march for equal rights. I think that we should allow Mrs. Wells to walk in our delegation. If the women of other states lack moral courage, we should show them that we are not afraid of public opinion. We should stand by our principles. If we do not the parade will be a farce.”

But the matter was not settled.
“I’m afraid that we shall not be able to have you march with us,” announced Mrs. Trout, reappearing in the room, followed by Mrs. Smith. “Personally, I should like nothing more than to have you represent our Illinois suffrage organization. But I shall have to ask you to march with the colored delegation. I am sorry, but I feel that it is the right thing to do.”

“I shall not march at all unless I can march under the Illinois banner,” I replied. “When I was asked to come down here I was asked to march with the other women of our state, and I intend to do so or not take part in the parade at all.”
“If I were a colored woman, I should be willing to march with the other women of my race,” argued Mrs. Smith.

“There is a difference, Mrs. Smith, which you probably do not see,” I replied. “I shall not march with the colored women. Either I go with you or not at all. I am not taking this stand because I personally wish for recognition. I am doing it for the future benefit of my whole race.” For I felt that although she may have made gains for suffrage, she had also confirmed white women in their attitude of segregation.

When I saw that we were likely to have a restricted suffrage, and the white women of the organization were working like beavers to bring it about, I made another effort to get our women interested.

The voice of the people is the voice of God, and I long with all the intensity of my soul for the Garrison, Douglass, Sumner, Whittier, and Phillips who shall rouse this nation to a demand that from Greenland’s icy mountains to the coral reefs of the Southern seas, mob rule shall be put down and equal and exact justice be accorded to every citizen of whatever race, who finds a home within the borders of the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Then no longer will our national hymn be sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, but every member of this great composite nation will be a living, harmonious illustration of the words, and all can honestly and gladly join in singing:

My country! ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty
Of thee I sing.
Land where our fathers died,
Land of the Pilgrim’s pride,
From every mountain side
Freedom does ring.

Works Cited

Wells-Barnett, Ida B., Alfreda Duster, Eve L. Ewing, and Michelle Duster. “Hard
Beginnings.” Essay. In Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B.
Wells, 61–62. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2020.

Wells-Barnett, Ida B., Alfreda Duster, Eve L. Ewing, and Michelle Duster. “Susan
B. Anthony.” Essay. In Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B.
Wells, 291–92. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2020.

Wells-Barnett, Ida B., Alfreda Duster, Eve L. Ewing, and Michelle Duster. “New
Projects.” Essay. In Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells,
343–44. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2020.

Wells-Barnett, Ida B., Alfreda Duster, Eve L. Ewing, and Michelle Duster.
“Seeking the Negro Vote.” Essay. In Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography
of Ida B. Wells, 422. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2020.
“Illinois Women Feature Parade.” The Chicago Tribune, March 4, 1913.

Wells-Barnett, Ida B. “Lynch Law in All Its Phases.” Speech, February 13, 1893.