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Southern States Woman Suffrage Association

Intro

Kate M. Gordon, Leader of the Southern States Woman Suffrage Association

[[File:Laura Clay Kentucky.jpg|thumb|Laura Clay, Vice-President of SSWSA[[File:Mrs. O.H.P. (Alva) Belmont (Cropped).jpg|thumb|Mrs. Alva Belmont, a donor to both the CU and the SSWSA]]]] The Southern States Woman Suffrage Association was a group dedicated to winning voting rights for white women. The group mainly consisted of highly educated, middle and upper class white women of prominent families. They were originally part of the larger National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), but broke off in 1906. Prominent leaders in the group include Laura Clay and Kate Gordon, who focused on local and state reforms rather than a national amendment. The group applied tactics like the Lost Cause, the belief that the Confederate cause was moral and just, and the Southern strategy, appealing to white voters by promoting racism, in their quest for suffrage.

Roots

In 1866, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the American Equal Rights Association, an organization working to win suffrage to all, regardless of race or sex. The American Equal Rights Association was a unified group for 3 years, splitting with the ratification of the 14th and 15th amendment .The Fourteenth Amendment (all persons born in the US were citizens and received Due Process) was ratified in 1868. This was followed by the 15th Amendment (black men could vote)  in 1870. The ratification of these two Reconstruction-era amendments divided the suffragist movement. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment addressed racial equality but made no mention of gender. Angered at the exclusion of women in the 15th Amendment, Stanton and Antony formed the more radical National Woman’s Suffrage Association (NWSA). The NWSA wanted to achieve the vote with a Constitutional amendment, and pressed the federal government with other women’s rights issues (unionization of female workers, marital rights). The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), formed by Lucy Stone, wanted to achieve suffrage by reforming the local and state levels . Local suffrage later becomes the main tactic employed by the Southern States Women’s Suffrage Association in their “white only” movement.

Formation of Southern States Women Suffrage Association

The NWSA and AWSA worked their own agendas until 1890, when they decided to reunite and form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). NAWSA worked for state-level amendments, hoping to eventually gaining enough momentum for a national amendment. NAWSA was the first group to pioneer the Southern Strategy, convincing Southern political leaders that they could ensure white supremacy by enfranchising white women. At this time, women from the South were interspersed in groups like NAWSA, forming local chapters such as Equal Suffrage League of Virginia. However, in the early 1900s, a uniquely Southern movement began to arise. Led by Kate Gordon of Louisiana (1861-1932), these upper class Southern women believed that state-level suffrage measures would help maintain white supremacy. Gordon first started the ERA (Equal Rights for All) Club in New Orleans, to gain suffrage while appealing to a majority white electorate. Her leadership in the ERA was noticed by the NAWSA, and she was offered a position as secretary of the organization. However, her more conservative views and state’s right approach ostracized her from NAWSA. Gordon opposed the push for a national amendment, and formed the Southern States Woman Suffrage Association (SSWSA) at a conference in New Orleans. This gathering was later known as the Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference, and was the most notable gathering of these Southern suffragists.

Like Gordon, Laura Clay of Kentucky (1849-1941) had been a prominent member of NAWSA; however, she became distanced from the establishment because she did not fully agree with its goals, specifically its aim of a federal amendment. She saw the federal amendment as a way to gain “publicity,” but would much rather have suffrage come from a grassroots level. Clay was “lukewarm” about a separate suffrage group, but joined forces with Kate Gordon in 1916 and became vice president of SSWSC. Initially, Gordon had promised her new group would work alongside, and not against, NAWSA, appealing to more centrist members like Clay.

Beliefs and Timeline of the SSWSA

SSWSA utilized a local-level suffrage, much like the AWSA’s strategy. Like conservative Southern Democrats at the time, the SSWSA felt that black voters were a source of corruption and saw black disenfranchisement as a positive. The SSWSA, specifically Gordon, paralleled their beliefs to the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Formed in 1894, the United Daughters of the Confederacy was a group championing the Lost Cause, or that the Confederate fight was a just one. They worked to commemorate fallen Confederate soldiers with statues, romanticizing the era of slavey and continuing white supremacy

Membership numbers of the SSWSA were never recorded. The organization’s New Southern Citizen was a monthly publication updating members on SSWSA’s progress; it was published from October 1914 to 1917. The SSWSA perceived its greatest victory to be the 1916 Democratic primary, claiming that its “state’s rights suffrage” had been included in the party platform.

The New Southern Citizen, the monthly publication from the Southern States Woman Suffrage Association.

Monetary funds for the organization, which was estimated at $6,000 a year, were donated anonymously. Surprisingly, these donations came from Alva Belmont (previously a Vanderbilt) , who once donated to the CU. The CU (Congressional Union), later named the National Woman’s Party, was the militant, feminist break-off from NAWSA started by Alice Paul. Its beliefs in a federal amendment was ideologically opposite to the SSWSA state rights approach, yet Belmont donated to both. Belmont, known for her philanthropy towards African Americans in New York, also wrote to Laura Clay that she understood the SSWSA’s “eternal vigilance [on the race problem] in the southern suffrage movement”.

Tension and Division

Gordon and Clay’s group was increasingly at odds with NAWSA, and many Southern suffragists opposed Gordon’s state level approach. No policies in the SSWSA were established to govern relations with other suffragist groups. Gordon and her ideas were seen as extreme to most suffragist, even in the South, and was all but shunned by the federal level movement. Gordon’s unwavering opposition to federal suffrage drove some prominent SSWSA leaders out of the group. Many SWWSA members preferred state suffrage, but would accept federal change if it meant gaining suffrage. Laura Clay proposed a bill to bridge the two sides: a goal of national suffrage without infringing on state’s rights. She believed she could unite all suffrage groups (NAWSA, SWWSA) under this one bill. After receiving support from the two groups, she took the bill to Congress, but it never left committee. When the Nineteenth Amendment was written in 1919, Gordon opposed its ratification.

End of SWWSA

The groups activity began to decline in 1917, becoming nothing more than a “paper organization”. The group officially ended after the 19th amendment was ratified in 1920.

A poster detailing the Lost Cause. These beliefs were incorporated into the platform of the SSWSA.