Women, Race & Class

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1981

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-10

Chapters 11-13

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 7-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary: “Woman Suffrage at the Turn of the Century: The Rising Influence of Racism”

Davis highlights the life and contributions of Ida B. Wells, who founded the first Black women’s suffrage club. Wells was a friend and admirer of Susan B. Anthony, but Wells faulted Anthony’s failure to fight against racism publicly within the suffrage movement (though she appeared to do so privately). Wells believed Anthony was wrong in abandoning Black people to avoid alienating white Southern women, especially during the 1890s, when racism was rising and disenfranchisement of Black people, segregation, and lynch law and mob violence were prevailing. This era is when the NAWSA took a hard turn toward fully embracing racism and white supremacy.

Davis rejects the “expediency” argument used by Anthony and others to justify catering to Southern women given the imminent danger to Black lives. Davis notes that “the ‘neutral’ stance assumed by the leadership of NAWSA” actually encouraged the proliferation of undisguised racist ideas within the ranks of the suffrage campaign” (113). For example, Henry Blackwell suggested a literacy test as a condition to the right to vote. In 1893, with Anthony as president, NAWSA passed a resolution that reiterated Blackwell’s suggestion stating that there were more literate women than illiterate men, Black voters, or immigrant voters. Davis argues that the resolution not only “dismissed the rights of Black and immigrant women,” but also “was an attack on the working class as a whole” (116); by indicating they would use their vote to “subdue” the working class (comprising Black people, immigrants, and uneducated white people), the leaders of NAWSA aligned themselves with the capitalist class.

The end of the 19th century also saw US imperialist expansion into places including the Philippines or Puerto Rico. Davis argues that the same racism that continued to oppress Black people simultaneously fueled imperialist ambitions. Having already welcomed white supremacy within the organization, the NAWSA had no hesitancy supporting US monopoly capitalists and imperialist goals. For instance, Anthony was not concerned about the seizure of Hawaii and its effects, but with ensuring women in Hawaii would be able to vote, “[a]s if women in Hawaii and Puerto Rico should demand the right to be victimized by US Imperialism on an equal basis with their men” (118).

While Davis does not hold Anthony “personally responsible” for the racism of the suffrage movement, she notes that given the widespread terror and violence, Anthony and others’ “neutrality” really served white supremacist interests. Davis points to this “[b]ourgeois ideology” as having “the power of dissolving real images of terror into obscurity and insignificance, and of fading horrible cries of suffering human beings into barely audible murmurings and then silence'' (121). Meanwhile, Black people continued to challenge the racism and violence they were experiencing, calling out President McKinley for his silence on lynchings and massacres.

By the beginning of the 20th century, white supremacy and male supremacy had become closely linked and “mutually strengthening” (122). The racist ideas of Anglo-Saxon racial superiority fed portrayals of Black people “as incompetent barbarians” and white women as mothers with a “special responsibility [...] to safeguard white supremacy” by becoming “nutur[ers] of the male of the species” (121). This period of time also saw a rise in the eugenics movement, whose influence made its way into the NAWSA. As racism intensified, so did the “sexist cult of motherhood” (122), backfiring on the suffrage movement’s own goals. For instance, the 1903 NAWSA convention included plenty of racist arguments, many of which were accompanied by “defenses of the motherhood cult” (123).

Some arguments outright provoked or warned of inevitable racial conflict between poor white people and Black people. Davis argues such ideas were deliberate capitalist efforts to prevent class unity between working white people and Black people. This same racial conflict argument was then used to argue for women’s suffrage and for literacy qualifications. Davis notes the irony of suffragists making expediency arguments about maintaining their neutrality on Black equality, only to begin arguing that women’s suffrage was “the most expedient means to achieve racial supremacy” (125). By the 20th century, the suffrage movement appeared to be more about preserving white supremacy than about women’s rights.

Chapter 8 Summary: “Black Women and the Club Movement”

Racism prevalent in the suffrage movement also found its way into the women’s club movement, such as the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC), which excluded a Black delegate from attending its convention in 1900. Due to this segregation within the club movement, Black women eventually organized the first Black women’s club with the aim of combatting lynching and the sexual abuse of Black women. For white middle-class women, clubs filled a void not met in their domestic lives. For Black women, it was the need to fight racism that led them to organize clubs. This goal, Davis argues, connected the mostly middle-class leadership of these clubs more closely to working-class Black women than their experience of sexism did to white middle-class women.

Among key organizers of clubs was leading anti-lynching voice Ida B. Wells, who served as the president of the first Black women’s club in Chicago. Inspired by Wells, Black women in Brooklyn and New York created the Women’s Loyal Union, also among the first clubs led by Black women. The Boston Women’s Era Club, created by Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, strongly protested lynch law, illustrating how these clubs worked tirelessly in defense of Black people. As clubs increased, the First National Conference of Colored Women was organized in Boston in 1895 under founding president Mary Church Terrell. The conference focused on strategizing how to challenge the propaganda against Black women and the lynchings of Black people. Terrell played a significant role in expanding the political power of the Black women’s club movement and was a strong orator.

Davis notes some challenges within the club movement, such as elitism among some middle-class leaders and animosity between key figures, including Wells and Terrell. Davis praises these women’s individual accomplishments but calls their feud a “tragic thread within the history of the Black women’s club movement” (136).

Chapter 9 Summary: “Working Women, Black Women and the History of the Suffrage Movement”

During the Civil War, the labor movement was expanding, with many unions organizing across the country. More white women were working outside their homes and founding their own unions, as male supremacy was prevalent even within the labor movement. The presence of multiple women, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, at the founding of the National Labor Union (NLU) in 1866 forced resolutions to pass that would address the rights of working women. Since Black people were excluded from white labor groups, they founded the National Colored Labor Union in 1869 and committed themselves to including women more actively than their white counterparts.

In its early years, Anthony’s newspaper, Revolution, included demands for better wages and treatment of working women, such as equal pay and the eight-hour day. However, Anthony and Stanton did not fully accept trade unionism or the importance of class solidarity, just as they did not accept the importance of prioritizing Black liberation. For example, Anthony’s comments that female printers should “work as scabs” when men in the trade were striking led the NLU to exclude her at its 1869 convention (140). Stanton’s response to this exclusion was branding working-class men as “the worst enemies of Woman Suffrage” (140).

White, working women ultimately did not commit to the suffrage movement strongly as they were too preoccupied with the immediate needs of poor wages and working conditions and not fully persuaded by the argument that suffrage would bring equality; they saw that working-class men were still economically exploited by employers despite having the ability to vote. Davis criticizes Anthony’s ignorance of this predicament, as she once described poor working men, Black or white, as having equal opportunities as rich men. Anthony’s views reflected her belief that sexism was “far more oppressive than class inequality and racism” (141-42). Davis argues that Anthony’s position reflected bourgeois ideology: Anthony could not understand that working-class and Black women shared the common suffering of class exploitation and racist oppression, “which did not discriminate between the sexes” (142). Davis concludes that the priority for working-class white women and Black women was therefore not sexism, but the exploitative employer or capitalist.

Partly influenced by the rise of the socialist movement, working women renewed their commitment to the suffrage movement in large numbers in the early 20th century. Particular circumstances, such as tragic deaths of women at work, required political power to demand better working conditions and wages. Despite their exclusion from the NAWSA, Black women also continued to fight for suffrage. On this issue, Black women received widespread support from Black men, including W. E. B. Du Bois—the most prominent male supporter of women’s suffrage in the early 20th century. Davis argues that Black women demonstrated a willingness to commit to a multiracial movement for women’s rights, but “they were betrayed, spurned and rejected by the leaders of the lily-white woman suffrage movement” because “Black women were simply expendable entities when it came time to woo Southern support with a white complexion” (148). The irony of this was that Southern states still ultimately opposed the 19th Amendment.

Chapter 10 Summary: “Communist Women”

With the widespread influence of Frederick Engels and Karl Marx’s 1848 Communist Manifesto, Joseph Weydemyer began the first US Marxist organization. However, within Marxist and socialist groups such as the Socialist Labor Party, women were notably absent. As the women’s equality movement gained strength at the beginning of the 20th century, more women also became involved in the socialist movement. Founded in 1900, the Socialist Party was for years the only political party that fought for women’s suffrage, and socialist women were at the forefront in this fight. When the Communist Party was founded in 1919, socialist women also became early leaders within that party.

When the union and socialist organization International Workers of the World (IWW) was founded in 1905, it endorsed a policy of fighting racism. By contrast, leaders of the Socialist Party like Eugene Debs argued that no special focus was needed on Black people, as their focus was on industrial workers, who were primarily white. Since Black women were rarely industrial workers before World War II, they too were primarily ignored by the Socialist party. Davis characterizes this lack of attention to Black struggles and women as “one of the unfortunate legacies” that the later Communist party had to tackle (151), incorporating a commitment to Black liberation and combating racism in its vision.

Davis highlights key socialist and communist women who were influential leaders during their time:

Lucy Parsons was a Black leader active in the Socialist Labor Party and an organizer for the Chicago Working Women’s Union. Although she is known particularly as the wife of Haymarket Massacre martyr and radical labor leader Albert Parsons, Davis brings attention to her other contributions to the labor movement. Parsons believed sexism and racism were part of capitalist exploitation; to her, the root of oppression was being poor, not necessarily being Black or a woman. Unusually at the time, Parsons also advocated for the rights of women within the sex trade.
Ella Reeve Bloor, also known as “Mother” Bloor, was a socialist leader, labor organizer, and member of the Socialist and Communist Parties. Mother Bloor was especially famous for her participation in strikes across the country and for her speeches. She recognized that during her days in the Socialist Party she lacked a race-conscious framework; as a Communist, however, she later fought against racism and proved herself to be a “deeply principled ally of the Black Liberation movement” (159).
Anita Whitney, although born into a wealthy white family, became a women's suffrage activist and a member of the Socialist and later Communist Parties. She also served on the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and became an outspoken critic of lynching, which she spoke about in front of an audience of white clubwomen at a time when many white people were hesitant to do so and for which she was arrested. She helped “forge the Communist party’s strategy for working-class emancipation” alongside Black members (161).
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was active in socialist and communist movements for close to 60 years, as she became involved at a young age alongside her parents. She was a leading organizer of the IWW, joining many strikes throughout the country, and later became an active leader in the Communist Party, collaborating with Black Communist leaders such as Claudia Jones and recognizing the triple suffering of Black women due to their sex, race, and class. Throughout her life, she displayed solidarity with Black Communist women, with whom she was imprisoned during the McCarthy era.
Lastly, Davis highlights the life of Claudia Jones, a Communist immigrant woman born in the British West Indies. She was an active advocate of freeing the Scottsboro Nine, which led her to join the Communist Party. She also advocated for Black domestic workers’ rights and criticized the attitudes toward and exploitation of Black domestic workers on the part of even progressives or communists. She was arrested alongside Elizabeth Gurley Flynn but separated from her due to segregation within the prison; sometime after her release, Jones was deported to England.

Chapters 7-10 Analysis

Davis continues her chronological telling of history in Chapters 7 and 8 with a focus on the turn of the 20th century before shifting in Chapters 9 and 10 to working-class efforts and the labor movement across several decades. The pattern is similar to that of Chapters 4 through 6:

In Chapter 7, Davis closes out her analysis of racism’s influence on the suffrage movement by showing how the movement eventually embraced white supremacy at the expense of Black women. This reflects the recurring theme of suffrage leaders’ limitations with respect to race- or class-consciousness.
In Chapters 8 and 9, and partially in Chapter 10, she spotlights the contributions of Black and working-class women to women’s rights or other movements, illuminating the unique circumstances that demand an intersectional approach.
In Chapter 10, she praises examples of white socialist or communist solidarity with the struggle against racism.

In these chapters, Davis also expands on capitalism as a source of inequality. Her argument here is a broadly Marxist one in that she frequently locates the roots of racism and sexism in economic relationships. For example, of the relationship between the white working class and working-class people of color, Davis says, “[R]acial conflict did not emerge spontaneously, but rather was consciously planned by the representatives of the economically ascendant class [...] to facilitate their own exploitative designs” (124); later, she notes that “sexual inequality as we know it today did not exist before the advent of private property” (224). However, Davis does not depict white supremacy or patriarchy as mere byproducts of capitalism. Rather, she suggests that they are key to its success and have shaped its development in their own turn (e.g., by furnishing the ideological “justification” for imperialism). Davis’s goal is therefore for readers to understand how sex, race, and class are all systematically linked and act together to oppress people.

In Chapter 9, Davis expands on how working-class women’s issues were left out of the suffrage movement. Middle-class suffragists failed to understand that for the working class, fighting against their exploitative employer took priority over combatting sexism. This is strikingly similar to Davis’s earlier discussion of the suffrage movement’s response when Douglass and others argued that Black men had a more immediate need for the vote. Davis in fact brings attention to this parallel by describing Stanton and Anthony’s position as “astonishingly similar” to their “anti-Black position within the Equal Rights Association” (140). Rhetorically, this parallel underscores why an intersectional approach is important: Though not identical, the positions of Black and working-class women in relation to the suffrage movement were interlinked.

Davis’s critique of class exploitation entails interspersing her historical telling not only with arguments, but also with her personal commentary or thoughts on others’ arguments. Much of this commentary comes in the context of her criticism of suffrage leaders or white middle-class women in the suffrage movement. This has the effect of particularly stressing the theme of their feminism’s shortcomings. For instance, Davis displays a strong disdain “bourgeois ideology,” which she expresses through powerful word choice when she writes, “[b]ourgeois ideology—and particularly its racist ingredients—must really possess the power of dissolving real images of terror into obscurity and insignificance, and of fading horrible cries of suffering human beings into barely audible murmurings and then silence” (121). Similarly, in Chapter 9, she argues it was the “blinding powers” of bourgeois ideology that caused Susan B. Anthony’s inability to understand the struggles of working-class and Black women. Just as she repeatedly describes the dangerous ability of racism to infect even progressive minds, she uses a similar style and tone when describing the powers of capitalism or bourgeois ideology to do the same.

Another example of Davis displaying a subjective tone to reveal her inner thoughts is her use of sarcasm. When discussing Anthony’s unquestioning acceptance of US imperialist actions in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, Davis highlights that Anthony expressed anger about ensuring women in those lands would have the right to vote, but no anger about the actual seizures of the lands: “As if women in Hawaii and Puerto Rico should demand the right to be victimized by US Imperialism on an equal basis with their men” (118). Through this, Davis reveals what she believes Anthony should have really or additionally been angry about and thereby highlights further the inability of figures like Anthony to understand a perspective beyond their own as middle-class white women.

Davis additionally displays a strong sense of disappointment over what could have been a powerful solidarity, describing Black women’s willingness to contribute to a multiracial movement only to be “betrayed, spurned and rejected by the leaders of the lily-white woman suffrage movement” (148). As a concluding exclamation point, she points out an irony to underscore her frustration, noting that for all the effort by white women to cater to racist Southern women, many Southern states still remained opposed to the 19th Amendment. Davis highlights ironic circumstances or statements throughout the book to draw attention to unintended consequences, logical absurdities, or flawed arguments. Simultaneously, highlighting irony assists Davis in emphasizing certain themes or arguments. In Chapter 9, for example, she points to the irony of the 1913 racially segregated suffrage parade having Black men as the primary sympathetic male spectators.

Davis also continues her use of juxtaposition in these chapters. Through contrasting examples of the reality of the suffrage movement and its potential, she further illuminates the themes of the failure of white women leaders and the power of solidarity. Davis takes a unique approach in Chapter 10 by dedicating most of it to naming and spotlighting key socialist and communist women. However, her purpose in doing so is familiar: to juxtapose the accomplishments of these women with what Davis has consistently flagged as the failures of the leaders of the suffrage movement.