“INTERSECTIONALITY”
One of the
truly surprising movements of the 19th century was the abolitionist
movement. The Constitution of the United
States had enshrined slavery and stacked the electoral deck to favor Southern
white slaveholders (a stacking that remains today in the Electoral
College). Although Congress abolished
the international slave trade in 1808, slavery itself was allowed to remain
legal and viable. In the middle of this
ongoing struggle between the idea of equality and the reality of slavery, folk
rose up in opposition to slavery – a few at first, including William Lloyd
Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Nat Turner, Angelina and Sarah Grimke, Sojourner
Truth, David Walker, and others. One of
the other leaders of the abolitionist movement was also a woman named Abigail
Kelley, though her role has been largely forgotten (what else is new in the
patriarchal annals of American history?)
For Women’s
History Month, I want to revisit her story a bit, because it is testimony to the necessary problem of
“intersectionality,” which we saw played out in the struggles over the recent
Women’s March. Kelley was born in 1811
in Massachusetts to a Friends family and seemed to be destined to be a typical
white woman of the 19th century.
She was converted to an active anti-slavery life by Garrison and by the
Grimke sisters, although there was already strain showing in the relationship
of those three. As she got more
involved, almost immediately her skills at organizing, fund-raising and public
speaking became apparent to all. Kelley
was committed to the abolition of slavery and to equal rights for women, and
this intersectionality would cause her, and many others, problems for the rest
of her life.
Her father
died in 1836, and it provoked a deep crisis in her: “Who am I?
What shall I do now? How can I
know God?” She was 25 and unmarried, and
she wondered if she should begin to look for a husband and settle into domestic
life. After hearing Garrison and the
Grimke sisters speak, she decided that her future did not lie in female
submission. She did marry Stephen
Symonds Foster, and they became a powerful couple in these intersectional
movements. She answered the call to
throw herself into organizing women to oppose slavery. She helped organize the first national
convention of women against slavery in 1837.
The reaction from most males in the anti-slavery movement was ridicule
and scorn – woman’s place was in the home.
Yet, Kelley’s talents were clear to those in the leadership of the
movement. She became a lecturer on the
payroll of the all-male Anti-Slavery Society.
She went on
the lecture circuit in the West (Ohio and other places) and was an instant
sensation. She was reviled because she
was an advocate for two causes at once: abolition of slavery and equal rights
for women. Her growing influence caused
riots in public when she spoke. Women
who associated with her were tried in church courts for it. The anti-slavery movement was split in two
because she was a leader in this intersectionality of abolition of slavery and
equality of women. The great Frederick
Douglass would criticize her for splitting the movement – he later repented of
this and indeed attended the regional Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention in
1848. And speaking of the difficulty of
intersectionality, she and Douglass had a nasty split for several years over
this.
Yet she
persevered – she recruited powerful women’s rights advocates Susan B. Anthony
and Lucy Stone. She traveled all over the North organizing and lecturing on
abolition and on women’s rights. Her
journey did not end at the close of the Civil War. The Anti-Slavery Society decided to disband
because they thought that slave power had been defeated, but Abby Kelley knew
better. She was the first to speak
against the disbanding, because she knew the depth of the slave power in
American consciousness. She and
Frederick Douglass became allies again, and they formed a formidable
partnership to work for the passage of the 15th Amendment to extend
the vote to black men. Here came
intersectionality again: her former
protégé Susan B. Anthony and others harshly criticized her and Douglass and
others for supporting this amendment which gave men the right to vote but not
women. As we know, that amendment passed
but was gradually gutted over the next 30 years by the powerful slave
lobby. It would be over 50 years before
women won the right to vote.
The life of
Abby Kelley is worthy of study and remembering because of her powerful witness
and the difficult issue of intersectionality.
Throughout the decades of the 19th century, the issues of
abolition and women’s rights intersected and often clashed. We should learn from her life and the life of
others like Frederick Douglass, where these issues formed core values and
forced difficult decisions. Because of
the power of patriarchy, women’s rights are almost always one of the roads in
intersectionality. We saw that in the
recent struggles over the Women’s March of 2019, where race and gender and
anti-Semitism intersected and clashed and weakened that particular movement,
yet all the while, all of those issues were important and relevant.
The support
of the 19th Amendment to give women the right to vote seems to be a
no-brainer, but the issue of intersectionality came into that one, too. The white leaders of that movement repeatedly
used race to try to keep out black women’s leadership and to insure that white
women and white men in the South would support the 19th
Amendment. Indeed, the deciding vote in
the deciding state for the 19th Amendment was cast by a white man in
the South – Harry Burns in Tennessee.
Wherever we
find ourselves in this discussion, let us remember all these witnesses and find
our place. Women’s History Month reminds
us how difficult, and yet how vital, the issue of intersecitonality is. Women
often pay the price for this issue of intersectionality, so let us find our
place and make our witness: the ERA
needs one more state for ratification.
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