SOLIDARITY

Frederick Douglass joined forces with his friend Elizabeth Cady Stanton, speaking and writing forcefully to champion women's rights - just as Stanton, Anthony, Stone, Gage and other leaders of the women's movement campaigned tirelessly for the abolition of slavery. The two freedom movements worked hand in hand for social reforms for twenty years.

When the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution were introduced after the Civil War, Stanton and Anthony were alarmed, deciding they would only work for these amendments if they included UNIVERSAL rights - including the vote - for women as well as blacks.

Douglass weighed the battle and declared, "It is the hour of the Negro." In his view, women would have to wait until black men got their rights. After the amendments passed, the Supreme Court decided that the amendments only applied to men. Women would have to organize, petition, testify before Congress, and conduct countless acts of civil disobedience before winning their right to vote 50 years later in 1920.

During this time, more hard choices were made: a desperate Susan B. Anthony entered into a coalition with Southern women whose efforts excluded black women from getting the vote. This angered many close friends in the women's movement, and some started their own women's suffrage organizations.