Multi-Generational Activism: Lifting as They Climb

In recognition of the centennial of the 19th amendment, the BWSA blog is publishing a series on Black women’s relationship to voting from the nineteenth century to the present. The third segment in this series is “Multi-Generational Activism: Lifting as They Climb” by Helene Balcerac, independent scholar.

Looking back at the 19th amendment and the history of Black women in the women’s suffrage movement, what strikes me is the significant role that foremothers played in shaping the legacies of prominent suffragists.

Although the 19th amendment was ratified in 1920, the fight for women’s right to vote started in the 1840s. Twice excluded due to both sexism and racism, Black women created their own organizations to achieve their goals and advocate for themselves, as no one else would: they financed schools for Black children, they hosted literary salons to discuss ideas and improve their own writing, they formed anti-slavery societies and later fought for women’s suffrage, racial justice, and civil rights.

The Forten family, a prominent family from Philadelphia, is a great example of Black women’s multi-generational activism: Charlotte Vandine Forten (1786-1886); her daughters Margaretta Forten (1808-1875), Harriet Forten Purvis (1810-1875), Sarah Forten Purvis (1814-1883); and her granddaughters Charlotte Forten Grimké (1837-1914) and Harriet “Hattie” Purvis (1839-1904) were all involved in activism, from anti-slavery to women’s suffrage. [1]

The Forten women were founding members of the interracial Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833 (whose prominent members included Lucretia Mott and Sarah Mapps Douglass) and their abolitionist activism spanned multiple decades: Sarah Forten Purvis’ first poem in the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator was published in 1831 (“The Grave of the Slave”) while poems by her niece Charlotte Forten were published almost 30 years later, in 1860 (“The Slave-Girl’s Prayer”). [2] They developed their activism through various avenues, depending on their areas of predilection: Margaretta Forten was a teacher while Sarah Forten Purvis, a poet, joined the Female Literary Association founded in 1831 by Sarah Mapps Douglass, and published her poems and essays in The Liberator.[3]

The family also advocated for women’s rights: Margaretta Forten and her sister Harriet Forten Purvis were specifically involved in the organization of the Fifth National Woman's Rights Convention in Philadelphia in 1854.[4] Harriet Forten Purvis’s daughter Hattie Purvis joined the American Equal Rights Association in 1866 in support of universal suffrage and after the 15th amendment granted African American men (but not women) the right to vote in 1870, she joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony’s National Woman's Suffrage Association (NWSA).[5] By 1884, she was also serving on the executive committee of the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association.[6]

Charlotte Forten Grimké was also strongly influenced by her maternal aunts: she joined the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1860, became a notable teacher who taught to freedmen in South Carolina during the Civil War, published her journals and wrote on the subject of race relations, was a proponent of women’s rights, and became a founding member in 1896 of the National Association of Colored Women (along with Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Harriet Tubman), which adopted the motto of “Lifting as We Climb.” [7] Through her marriage with Francis James Grimké, she became the aunt and guardian of Angelina Weld Grimké (1880-1958), an influential poet of the Harlem Renaissance who advocated for women’s rights and racial justice.[8]

Over four generations and a hundred years, the women in the Forten family worked to better the conditions of their people and used various platforms (education, fundraising, writing, public speaking) to advocate for their goals. After the abolition of slavery, they shifted their focus to women’s right to vote, although racial justice remained an essential element of their platform as they still had to fight against both racism and sexism.

Since the twentieth century, Black women activists have continued the Forten women’s legacy. After women were legally granted the right to vote by the 19th Amendment in 1920, Black women still faced discriminatory practices established by states and physical threats which prohibited them from voting until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed those discriminatory practices. Today, Stacey Abrams cites her grandmother’s experience with voter intimidation and suppression during the 1960s as a major influence on her own activism in defense of voting rights.[9] Similarly, Martha S. Jones notes how she was inspired to write Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (2020) in part because of the activism of multiple generations of women in her family, from her great-great-grandmother born enslaved in the 1840s, to her grandmother who was active during the Civil Rights Movement.[10] The work of previous generations of women, from the 1840s to the 1960s, remains an influence on Black women’s activism today.

[1] Sumler-Lewis, J. (1981). The Forten-Purvis Women of Philadelphia and the American Anti-Slavery Crusade. The Journal of Negro History, 66(4), 281-288. doi:10.2307/2717236.

[2] Charlotte (Vandine) Forten, Margaretta Forten, Sarah Louisa Forten, and Harriet Forten Purvis were all listed as members of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Association (see the 1833-1838 Minutes and the 1845-1848 Minutes). Philadelphia Female Anti-slavery Society (1848). Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society Minutes, 1845-1848. Philadelphia, PA: Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Margaretta Forten and Sarah Forten are specifically mentioned as two of the eighteen women having signed the constitution for the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Association in December 1833. Philadelphia Female Anti-slavery Society. (1870). Appendix in Thirty-Sixth and Final Annual Report of the Philadelphia Female Anti-slavery Society. Library Company of Philadelphia; see also Stanton, E. C., Anthony, S. B., & Gage, M. J. (1889). History of Woman Suffrage (2nd ed., Vol. 1, p.325). New York, NY: Charles Mann. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28020/28020-h/28020-h.htm ; Margaretta Forten served multiple years as Recording Secretary, Treasurer, or on the Board of Managers, and was active in the association until its dissolution in 1870.; Ada. (1831, January 22). The Grave of The Slave. The Liberator, 1(4), p.14. Retrieved from http://fair-use.org/the-liberator/1831/01/22/the-liberator-01-04.pdf ; James Forten wrote to William Lloyd Garrison that one of his daughters used the pen name “Ada,” see James Forten’s letter to William Lloyd Garrison February 23, 1831. https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:2z10zf424 ; for more information on Sarah Forten Purvis’ pen names “Ada” and “Magawisca”, see Gernes, T. (1998). Poetic Justice: Sarah Forten, Eliza Earle, and the Paradox of Intellectual Property. The New England Quarterly, 71(2), 235. doi:10.2307/366504; Forten, Charlotte L. (1860, February 3). The Slave-Girl’s Prayer. The Liberator, 30(5), p.20. Retrieved from http://fair-use.org/the-liberator/1860/02/03/the-liberator-30-05.pdf.

[3] Margaretta Forten is listed as the head of a private school established in 1850. Bacon, B. C. (1859). Statistics of the colored people of Philadelphia (p.8). Philadelphia, PA: Board of Education of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/12014692/.; Lindhorst, M. (1998). Politics in a Box: Sarah Mapps Douglass and the Female Literary Association, 1831-1833. Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, 65(3), 271-272. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27774117.; Sarah Forten Purvis published many poems, but she also wrote an essay titled “The Abuse of Liberty” for The Liberator, under the pseudonym “Magawisca”. Magawisca. (1831, March 26). The Abuse of Liberty. The Liberator, 1(13). Retrieved from http://fair-use.org/the-liberator/1831/03/26/the-liberator-01-13.pdf.

[4] “Let us remember that behind the chief actors in these Conventions, there stands in each State, a group of women [...] [who] are the great sources of support and inspiration. […] Among such in Pennsylvania, let us ever remember […] Margaretta Forten, Harriet Forten Purvis.” Stanton, E. C., Anthony, S. B., & Gage, M. J. (1889). History of Woman Suffrage (2nd ed., Vol. 1, p.386). New York, NY: Charles Mann. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28020/28020-h/28020-h.htm.

[5] Harriet “Hattie” Purvis is listed as being appointed on the Finance Committee of the American Equal Rights Association in 1867 and as being elected Recording Secretary for the years 1868 and 1869. Stanton, E. C., Anthony, S. B., & Gage, M. J. (1881). History of Woman Suffrage (Vol. 2, pp.191n71, 309n106, 379n116). Rochester, NY: Susan B. Anthony. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28039/28039-h/28039-h.htm#FNanchor_116_116. She is also listed on the National Woman Suffrage Association’s declaration of 1876. National Woman Suffrage Association. (1876, July 4). Declaration and protest of the women of the United States by the National woman suffrage association (p.4). Retrieved from the Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.16000300/?sp=4

[6] Harriet “Hattie” Purvis is listed as an officer for the Pennsylvania Woman Suffrage Association in 1884. Anthony, S. B., & Harper, I. H. (1902). The History of Woman Suffrage (Vol. 4, p.898n414). Rochester, NY: Susan B. Anthony. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29870/29870-h/29870-h.htm#FNanchor_414_414

[7] Margaretta Forten (“Aunt M.”) and Harriet Forten Purvis (“Aunt H.”) are mentioned throughout Charlotte Forten’s journal. Forten, C. L., & Stevenson, B. E. (1988). The journals of Charlotte Forten Grimke. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. See also the biographical sketch in Maillard, M. (2017). “Lottie”. In Whispers of cruel wrongs: The correspondence of Louisa Jacobs and her circle, 1879-1911 (pp.29-34). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.; Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society. Society records, 1847-1862 (p.140). Retrieved from New England's Hidden Histories - Congregational Library http://nehh-viewer.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/#/content/SFASS/viewer/Society20records2C2018471862/140.; Forten, C. L. (1953). Part Six: Life Among the Freedmen, November 30, 1862 - February 14, 1863. In The Journal of Charlotte L. Forten (pp.141-166). New York, NY: Dryden Press.; Forten, C. L. (1885). One Phase of the Race Distinction. Manuscripts for the Grimke Book, 40. Retrieved from http://dh.howard.edu/ajc_grimke_manuscripts/40 ; also see Mr. Savage's Sermon “The Problem of the Hour”. (n.d.). Manuscripts for the Grimke Book, 41. Retrieved form http://dh.howard.edu/ajc_grimke_manuscripts/41 ; also see Colored People in New England. (1889). Manuscripts for the Grimke Book, 37. Retrieved from http://dh.howard.edu/ajc_grimke_manuscripts/37 .; Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote [PDF File], p.20. (2019, July/August). Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/lcm/pdf/LCM_2019_0708.pdf

[8] Angelina Weld Grimké wrote a tragic short story, “The Closing Door,” for Margaret Sanger's magazine Birth Control Review in 1919 and a play, Rachel in 1920, which both address the lynching of Black people and the devastating effects of continuous violence against Black people on mothers and potential mothers as a way to incite compassion. Grimké, A. W., & Herron, C. (1991). Selected works of Angelina Weld Grimké (pp.123-209, 252-281, 413-416). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. See also a biographical sketch in Sartor, M., & Jaworski, A. (2018). Biographical Sketch of Angelina Weld Grimke, 1880-1958. Retrieved from Alexander Street database.

[9] Abrams, S. (2020). Introduction. In Our Time is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company.

[10] Jones, M. S. (2020). Introduction: Our Mothers’ Gardens. In Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All. New York, NY: Basic Books. Another author, Carole Ione was also inspired by the story of her great-grandmother, abolitionist and feminist Frances Anne Rollin Whipper (1845–1901), to write a memoir about the rebel women of her family, Ione, C. (2004). Pride of Family: Four Generations of American Women of Color. New York, NY: Harlem Moon.