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The First National Conference of the Colored Women of America (August 1895)
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For the 4th year in a row, the Transformative Justice Coalition and the Voting Rights Alliance, in honor of Black History Month, are publishing a daily special series devoted to sharing the legacies and stories of the sheroes, heroes, and events in the fight for Black suffrage. This series incorporates social media posts; daily newsletters; an interactive calendar; and, website blog posts to spread the word broadly. In addition to 11 NEW articles this year, the series is starting off its first 7 days with stories of Black women involved in the Women's Suffrage Movement in honor of the 100th Year Anniversary of the 19th Amendment, even to though many African American women were not able to vote until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
We encourage everyone to share this series to your networks and on social media under the hashtag #VRABlackHistory. You can also tweet us
@VRAmatters
to share your own facts. Others can sign up for the daily articles at
VotingRightsAlliance.org
.
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On February 12th, 2020 we honored t
he First National Conference of the Colored Women of America. Held in August 1895 in Boston, Massachusetts, representatives from 42 African-American women's clubs gathered at this three-day organizing and strategy conference, the first of its kind in the United States. The goal of the conference was to create a national organization for Black women after Black women expressed via poll responses the need for such an organization in the early 1890's. The final tipping point was in 1895 when
"
an obscure Missouri journalist named John Jacks sent a letter to the secretary of the British
Anti-Slavery Society
, Florence Belgarnie. In the letter, Jacks criticized the anti-lynching work of
Ida B. Wells
, and wrote that black women had 'no sense of virtue' and were 'altogether without character'...
Soon after, [Boston activist
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin
]
organized a national conference in Boston, and asked clubs to send delegates. The first day was to be devoted to the business of organizing, and the second and third to 'vital questions concerning our moral, mental, physical and financial growth and well-being.' In the call, Ruffin explained the choice of venue: 'Boston has been selected as a meeting place because it has seemed to be the general opinion that here, and here only, can be found the atmosphere which would best interpret and represent us, our position, our needs, and our aims.'"
(Revolvy, N.D.b)
Josephine Ruffin was a civil rights leader and suffragist. She
founded the Woman's Era Club, an advocacy group for black women and the first Black women's club in Boston.
(Revolvy, N.D.b)
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"Margaret Murray Washington, the wife of
Booker T. Washington
, gave an influential speech titled 'Individual Work for Moral Elevation'. African-American women, she said, were divided into two classes: those who 'had the opportunity to improve and develop mentally, physically, morally, spiritually and financially' and those who had been deprived of that opportunity by slavery. She urged members of the former class to do all they could to uplift and inspire the latter, reasoning that individual success was not enough; that only by 'lifting as we climb' was it possible for the race to make progress.
Ella L. Smith, the first African-American woman to receive an M.A. degree from
Wellesley College
, spoke about the need for higher education. Noted scholar
Anna J. Cooper
spoke about the need to organize. In "The Value of Race Literature", author and former slave
Victoria Earle Matthews
stressed the importance of collecting literature by and about African Americans.
Agnes Jones Adams
gave a speech titled 'Social Purity' in which she asserted that being white was not a 'criterion for being American". Civil rights leader
T. Thomas Fortune
and social reformers
Henry B. Blackwell
and
William Lloyd Garrison
spoke about political equality.
Helen Appo Cook
, president of the National League of Colored Women, read a paper on 'The Ideal National Union'.
Alexander Crummell
, Anna Sprague (the daughter of
Frederick Douglass
), and anti-lynching activist
Ida B. Wells
also spoke. Other club women gave speeches on justice, temperance, and the need for industrial training." (Revolvy, N.D.b)
The Conference also included singing and poetry, and was held every two years. "The National Federation of Afro-American Women, which became the National Association of Colored Women the following year, was organized during the conference"
(Revolvy, N.D.b).
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