19th-century reform movements

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Race, sex & universal suffrage

Role-play summaryAs a Black woman born free in Maryland and active in abolition and women’s rights, I know freedom must include political voice. I would argue race and sex should never bar a person from voting.

What forces are at play?

Harper worked in both abolition and women’s-rights movements at a time when suffrage coalitions were divided over strategy. After the Civil War, the Fifteenth Amendment focused on race but not sex, and arguments over whether to support it exposed tensions between advocates for Black male suffrage and advocates for women’s suffrage.

How can this shape elections?

Harper’s experience brings intersectionality into the voting-rights story long before the term existed. Black women faced racism inside women’s movements and sexism inside movements for racial justice. Elections are influenced by which coalitions can stay together, whose claims are treated as urgent, and whether reforms are written broadly enough to protect people who stand at more than one excluded identity.

Carry these questions into the activity

What rule, barrier, or source of power matters most from this person’s point of view?
Who gains political voice — and who loses it — because of the way the election system works here?