“Failure Is Impossible?”
Sermon by Gale Charlotte
March 6, 2022
I’d like to thank the Worship Committee for inviting me to speak this morning, Denise Wilson for the amazing and uplifting music, and Gary Fowler and Eric Thiel for their expertise—enabling Zoom viewers and in-person congregants alike to be able to see and hear this morning.
Before I start to really speak about Susan B. Anthony this morning, I need to make a couple of things clear:
1) The Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-choice organization, has co-opted Anthony’s name and image to give themselves some legitimacy. Because Anthony left no direct heirs to challenge them, this organization has been able to get away with this with impunity. Numerous historians and scholars have stated that Anthony NEVER voiced an opinion, pro or anti, about women’s reproductive rights.
2) While women were granted the right to vote in 1920, there were restrictions placed on women of color; they were not all “free” to vote immediately. Indigenous women were not allowed to vote until 1924, when the US government passed the Indian Citizenship Act, and couldn’t truly freely vote until 1948. In 1943, the Magnuson Act allowed Chinese citizens the right to vote. In 1952, the McCarran-Walter Act was passed, allowing Japanese women the right to vote. And lest we forget, it was not until 1965, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act, that Black women everywhere in the country could freely vote.
So, let’s get started, shall we? Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820 in Adams, Massachusetts. Her father was a Quaker and her mother was a Baptist; however, Susan and her siblings were raised in the Quaker tradition, which was especially important, as the Quaker tradition sees women and men as equals, each with equal and valuable opinions and voices. In addition, the Anthonys made sure all their children were equally educated. Her parents were temperance advocates and were abolitionists (the family provided a stop on the Underground Railroad). Susan and her siblings learned how to organize and hold meetings, and distribute pamphlets. The beliefs and efforts of the parents DID influence the lives of their children, all of whom went on to be active leaders of various social movements (there is hope, parents!).
At the age of 17, Susan became a teacher, as many women did, to help her family financially. When she was 25, her family moved to Rochester, New York, and their farmstead became a meeting place for local advocates, including Frederick Douglass, who became a life-long friend.
It was in 1848, that the Seneca Falls Convention was convened by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. The reason for the Convention? To discuss the "condition of women" broadly, and specifically, to begin to organize and fight for a woman's right to vote. Women in the US had never spoken in public prior to this convention—imagine! So, that was in 1848. The 19th Amendment (giving women the right to vote) was ratified in 1920. I know you can do math, but I will tell you it took SEVENTY-TWO YEARS for women to win this basic right.
Susan B. Anthony was not immediately involved in the suffrage movement; by the time her family began to become active in the movement, Anthony was living away from home, working as a headmistress of a boarding school. She later said about this time: “I wasn't ready to vote, didn't want to vote, but I did want equal pay for equal work."
Susan B. Anthony met Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1851, and, I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say our country was never the same again! Their friendship lasted over 50 years.
In 1854, Stanton, Anthony, and Ernestine Rose presented petitions with ten thousand signatures FOR women’s suffrage and the right of married women to own property to the New York state legislature (I need to point out that getting those signatures involved going to every county in New York state by horse and buggy.) The petitions were remarkable in that they included signatures of both men and women, scandalous at the time. These three women were vilified as heretics, but New York did finally pass the Married Women’s Property Act six years later, in 1860; this law gave married women the right to own separate property, enter into contracts and be joint guardians of their children. This was huge, because prior to this, in New York state, women WERE the property of their husbands, as were their children. If there was a separation (woman-initiated divorce was not yet legal), the woman was left with nothing.
So, at age 31, Susan B. Anthony had indeed found her calling, and never looked back. She never married, and because of this, she could be the “legs” of the movement; travelling and lecturing while Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was the mother of seven, stayed at home, writing and organizing (yes, SEVEN children—Susan B. Anthony did become exasperated with her friend and all those babies, as she wanted Elizabeth Cady Stanton to join her out in the world).
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were not alone in the fight—they were joined by many women, among them Sojourner Truth, Lucy Stone (the first woman to graduate from college in the US), and Antionette Brown (the 1st female ordained minster in the US).
Oh how Anthony traveled! She traveled without an escort (scandalous!), and traveled mostly in the winter. Why the winter? Because farmers were more likely to be at home, rather than out on their farms, and would also have more free time to attend a speech or lecture. In one winter, she traveled by train and buggy to 54 counties in five months. She was seen first as an oddity, then as a threat—how dare she persist in talking about equal pay, equal education, the right to divorce, THE RIGHT TO VOTE??--her ideas were just so radical. She faced down angry mobs, she was pelted with rotten eggs, and at one stop, the only reason she was allowed to speak without interruption was the presence of the mayor with a loaded shotgun.
Anthony did return home during the Civil War, but she and Stanton agreed the work should continue—they were afraid (rightly so) that all of their efforts would be rolled back. While at home during the Civil War, Anthony worked with Harriet Tubman and others to supply fugitive slaves with food and supplies. After word was received about the Emancipation Proclamation, the women worked for the freedom of all slaves, and then began to work for universal suffrage—men and women of every race being allowed to vote. The men would certainly agree, right?!
No.
The women worked so closely with men on issues, but felt completely betrayed upon being told the men would be pushing for Black men’s rights only. Susan B. Anthony felt especially betrayed by Fredrick Douglass.
She said, “The question of precedence has no place on an equal rights platform. The only reason it ever forced itself here was because certain persons insisted that women must stand back and wait until another class should be enfranchised.”
She went on to say, “If Mr. Douglass had noticed who applauded when he said “black men first and white women afterwards”, he would have seen that is was only the men. When he tells us that the case of black men is so perilous, I tell him that even outraged as they are by the hateful prejudice against color, he himself would not today exchange his sex and color with Elizabeth Cady Stanton.”
The 14th Amendment was passed in 1868, and the 15th Amendment was passed in 1870.
Passage of these two amendments, and the very visible lack of support from the men in their movement, convinced the women that they needed their own women’s organization, which could work exclusively on the issues faced by women. There was a split in ideology: Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton believed women exclusively would hold the offices of their organization and the focus would be on a national Constitutional amendment. They formed: The National Woman Suffrage Association. Lucy Stone and others believed men should also be included in the running of their organization, and suffrage should be a state-by-state effort, and they formed: The American Equal Rights Association. It was 30 years before these organizations joined into one: The National American Woman Suffrage Association.
Susan B. Anthony also hit the road again (by now, she was age 52). On January 1, 1872, she looks back at the past year:
On way home, Rochester, N.Y.from six months in California, Oregon,Wash. Ter. & Nevada. 6 months ofconstant travel full 8000 miles --108 lectures -- The year's work -- full13000 miles, 170 meetings
At this point, the women realize they must expand their efforts from the legislative branch to the judicial.
In the presidential election of 1872, Susan B. Anthony decided to test the ambiguity of the 14th and 15th amendments. She and her sisters demanded they be allowed to register to vote, and the young male registrars agreed. On November 5, 1872, Anthony cast her vote at 7 a.m. This, of course, made headlines, as did stories of other women across the country who did the same thing. For three weeks, political officials did nothing. THEN, she was arrested (she demanded to be handcuffed), booked, released, and ordered to stand trial. Between the time of her release and her trial, Susan B. Anthony traveled to every city and town and village in the county, raising awareness of the issues surrounding her arrest, so……they had to move her trial! Of course, she was not allowed to speak in her own defense. And, the judge ordered the all-male jury to find Anthony guilty. She was fined $100. She said she would not pay it, and she never did.
The arrest of Anthony and the subsequent trial brought a lot of attention to the movement; Anthony was becoming a “legend in her own time”. She traveled, helped Stanton with her three-volume history of women (so the work of women would not be forgotten), organized many, many conventions, and joined forces with other women’s groups. She attended every session of Congress from 1869 to 1906. She became completely focused on one issue: women’s right to vote.
In 1878, after THREE YEARS of work, Stanton and Anthony finally convinced one California senator to propose an amendment to give women the right to vote. That year, the amendment did not make it out of committee. This amendment would be introduced at each session of Congress for the next 45 years.
By 1890, at age 70, Susan B. Anthony has to know she’s made a difference in women’s lives. 80% of colleges now admit women. Women have businesses, keep earnings, and own property. They are doctors and lawyers, and in some states can serve on juries. And, most importantly, women can vote in FOUR states: Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho (Anthony proudly wears a flag pin with FOUR stars on it). She sees young women bringing energy to “The Cause”: these young women see Anthony and the efforts she’s made on their behalf, but this 2nd generation had less understanding of how much women had been dominated in the past, how little power they had had. For them, with the right they had, the idea of women gaining the right to vote was possibly…attainable? Late in her life, Anthony looked at this next generation and said, “"…With such women consecrating their lives, failure is impossible!".”
In 1902, Elizabeth Cady Stanton died—the day before she died, she dictated a letter to President Teddy Roosevelt and his wife, to encourage him to include suffrage in his State of the Union address. What a blow her death must have been to Anthony! Anthony calls it, “An awful hush.”
In 1904, there was a reception at the White House to celebrate Anthony’s 84th birthday. Accounts from that day say she would have been more impressed with action, not flowery words.
In January, 1906, Susan B. Anthony attended her last women’s rights convention. She was weak, frail, and tired, but must have been uplifted by the love and devotion given to her that day. She died in March 1906 at the age of 86, after working her whole life for women’s rights, especially the right to vote. Her last words were, "To think I have had more than 60 years of hard struggle for a little liberty, and then to die without it seems so cruel."
Indeed.
I cannot think about this remarkable woman without asking, “Why?” and “How”? Why did she make the difficult decision to devote her entire adult life to the issue of temperance, abolition, and later, to the full-time job of working for women’s rights? Why did Susan B. Anthony keep working for the right of women to vote, knowing full well it would not happen in her lifetime? How did she keep going, day after day, month after month, year after year, facing hostile crowds, horrible traveling conditions, and advancing years, knowing that she would not see, would not celebrate, the day when women in this country could cast a vote in any election?
Sixty years is a very long time to do anything. We are two years into a global pandemic and, rightly so, we are tired and feel hopeless at times. We do the right things: get vaccinated, wear a mask, stay at home, and it just seems to make no difference. So why do we do it? Why should we do it?
Why should we commit to…anything?
Because it’s the right thing to do.
It’s the right thing. To DO.
As Susan B. Anthony showed us, throughout her entire life, we humans have the capacity to do what’s right for each other. But we don’t always have the motivation. We think it’s hard to attend a rally at our courthouse—it’s “SOOOOO far!” We think we’re too tired to write a postcard or even an email to our member of Congress! We think we are too busy to even call or text our local officials, who by the way are really willing to listen! We. Forget. To. Vote.
Thank the stars Susan B. Anthony didn’t feel this way.
Rev. Jennie spoke on February 13th about collective action and the common good. Remember, we do not do this alone. We can do everything together. We can lift each other up; we can take over when one of us is too tired or too burdened. If one of us has money, we can donate it. If one of us has a talent, we can use it. And, above all else, if we know just even one person of the next generation, we can show them, by our actions and our words, that this planet and our species is worth fighting for.
Finally, let us commit to the words of our covenant: “Love is the spirit of this church, and service is it’s law. THIS IS OUR covenant—to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another.”
Failure IS impossible.
Thank
you.
