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Ida B. Wells, founder of The Alpha Suffrage Club

Ideas: Impact outside of Illinois

Conflict(?) with white suffragists

What they stood for: seeing past race (Eight regiment article) and women's responsibility to make men value the sacredness of the vote.

Add more to Alpha Suffrage Record section

Change "opposition" segment to "Historical context"??

The Alpha Suffrage Club

...The Club aimed to give a voice to African American women who had been excluded from national suffrage organizations such as the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Its stated purpose was to inform black women of their civic responsibility and to organize them to help elect candidates who would best serve the interests of African Americans in Chicago. Club was formed when women in Chicago were granted the right to vote in 1910.  They fought against white women in the city who were trying to ban African Americans from voting.  Also wanted to promote an African American for public office. As Wells stated in her autobiography, "we (women) could use our vote for the advantage of ourselves and our race." Quoted in the Chicago Defender, a local black newspaper, she was more specific, stating that the object of the Alpha Suffrage Club was to make women "strong enough to help elect some conscientious race man as alderman."  Besides only focusing on women's newly gained civil duty to vote, Wells also encouraged these women to ensure that their husbands were taking seriously their responsibility to vote as well, recognizing the "sacredness" of the vote to both sexes.

Historical Context

1913, the year in which the club was founded, was a time still rife with Jim Crow laws and casual discrimination.

Wells declared that an inherent problem to black women was the fact that they were overall less invested in gaining the vote because the men and churches of their communities had not supported it. Once they did receive the right to vote, "nobody had attempted to instruct them in voting". The Alpha Suffrage Club attempted to amend this through means mentioned above like canvassing neighborhoods and registering black women to vote.

African American women as a whole were stretched between civil rights movements: black men who had already gained the right to vote wanted them to stop focusing on suffrage and concentrate their efforts on issues surrounding race, while white suffragettes wanted the opposite. Neither group considered that black women's lives were affected by both their sex and their race.

White Suffrage Conflict

In the early years of the women’s suffrage movement, abolition was something that brought many people together.  Abolition and women’s rights supporters worked together from the conclusion of the Civil War until the late 1800s.  Frederick Douglass even used the famous abolitionist newspaper, the North Star, to advertise the 1848 Seneca Falls suffrage meeting. The famous, American Equal Rights Association was formed in 1866 to bring to pass suffrage for all.  This organization supported both women and African American voting rights at first, but with the passing of the 14th and 15th amendment, there was a change in the group dynamics.  Instead of this one organization, in 1868 there were two groups that had differing opinions about black men being given the right to vote. Black women were members of both groups for a time and then racism became a tool that many suffrage groups channeled.  As time went on, the main goal of the movement became the right to vote and in order to gain broad support throughout the United States, they used black voting rights as a type of scapegoat.  Southern women were especially discriminatory to these Black suffragettes and still held the belief that African Americans were inferior. Ida B. Wells, one of the founders of the Alpha Suffrage Club, was told she could only participate in the black section of the Woman Suffrage Parade because she was an African American woman.  Despite the opposition, Wells still joined the white women marching and fighting for suffrage that day. About a year later she founded a suffrage club that supported all women in the pursuit of suffrage. Her organization advocated suffrage for all women, no matter their race or class which was something that other popular woman suffrage groups did not push for at that time. The movement became very two-sided, with one part of the movement supporting women’s suffrage for all women and the other side only supporting white women suffrage. Women like Ida B. Wells felt that not granting all people the right to vote would hurt the overall cause and therefore had the Alpha Suffrage Club support all people’s suffrage. This group distinction caused much conflict for ultimately no reason.  The 19th amendment was ratified in 1920 and granted suffrage to all women no matter their race, economic standing, or class. So although there was racism in the early fight for women’s vote, the law was not discriminatory.

Suffrage parade, 1913

Woman suffrage parade of 1913

...The rest of the Alpha Suffrage Club marched at the back with the other black delegates, which included Alpha Kappa Alpha sisters and Mary Church Terrell. The club payed for all of Wells' expenses to make it possible for her to march.

Beliefs

The Alpha Suffrage Club had many beliefs and ideals that other suffrage groups lacked. The group was founded on the basic principle that all women, no matter their race, should receive the right to vote along with the men.  There were other groups advocating for women’s right to vote, but there was a lack of support for colored women suffrage. They were of the opinion that to fully enjoy suffrage equally, it was important to be involved in political happenings.  Their Chicago-based group played an active role in legislation on voting, equality, and other civil rights matters. They supported philanthropy efforts in their community in order to strengthen colored people’s standing in the city of Chicago. They were early supporters of equality for colored people on many levels. Ida B. Wells preached that the right to vote was not being properly used by men once equal suffrage was achieved.  Now that suffrage was given to both men and women, their goal was to maximize the vote. They wanted equality and they wanted empowerment for colored women..

Besides universal suffrage, the club also fought for racial equality in other areas. They questioned why brave soldiers had to be seen by race instead of by their deeds.

Impacts of the Alpha Suffrage Club

The woman suffrage parade of 1913 legitimized the woman suffrage movement as a whole. The Alpha Suffrage Club and its protest against being forced to march in the back brought a spotlight to the fact that racism was also an issue even within an otherwise united movement. NAWSA wanted to secure white woman suffrage before moving on to African Americans, but the Alpha Suffrage Club and other suffrage associations pushed against that idea, and as a result the 19th amendment granted voting rights to all women, regardless of race.

The credibility of the club was recognized after the primary elections in 1914, when Republican delegates attended a club meeting and promised to choose a black nominee in exchange for the women’s support in future campaigns. The crucial role the club played in electing Oscar DePriest yielded his support for women’s voting rights, buoying the club’s causes in the ensuing years, furthering their efforts to back their social reforms with political power.