Controversies

Although Elizabeth Cady Stanton began her work as an abolitionist before she stepped into the field of women's rights, one cannot describe her as an antiracist. There are many instances of her comparing herself and other middle-class, white women to black slaves. Stanton said, "some of you who have no slaves, can see the cruelty of his oppression; but who of you appreciate the galling humiliation, the refinements of degradation, to which women are subject, in this the last half of the nineteenth century?"¹ She even went as far as to say the treatment of women in the United States is worse than the "slaveholding code in the Southern states," because a woman is "on a more equal ground with the oppressor" due to her "social position, refinement, and education" which a black person apparently cannot have.¹ She also believed that "the prejudice against color...is no stronger than that against sex."¹ She saw herself and other privileged white women as victims to the white man in the same way black people were, or perhaps as even worse. This is problematic for obvious reasons, as we now understand today that the injustices committed against black people and other people of color cannot compare.

While she may have supported the emancipation of slaves, she did not support them obtaining equal rights. She felt as though the white man would not accept both the liberation of black people and white women, so in the end she chose white women. Women of color were entirely left out of the conversation. According to Allison Lange in her book Picturing Political Power: Images in the Women's Suffrage Movement, this "erasure from public imagery demonstrated that suffragists...wanted to alter the gender hierarchy but protect white supremacy," and Stanton was no exception to this.² She wasn't the only suffragist who felt this way: Susan B. Anthony is also known for her racist thinking and lack of interest in enfranchising black women, or black people in general. Suffragists knew that white men would not tolerate so much enfranchisement all at once, so they had to pick their battles carefully. Even so, racism had a lot to do with this choice. Elizabeth Cady Stanton can be described as many things: intelligent, hard working, ambitious...and racist. Because of these controversies, one might wonder how credible Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony should remain today. 

¹ Ellen Carol Dubois and Smith Richard Cándida, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Feminist as Thinker: A Reader in Documents and Essays (New York: New York University Press, 2007).

² Allison K. Lange, Picturing Political Power: Images in the Women's Suffrage Movement (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2021).