Some Facts About Suffrage Leaders A Cause Is No Stronger Than Its Leaders" broadside.
Evans, J.B. Broadside: “Some Facts About Suffrage Leaders A Cause Is No Stronger Than Its Leaders.” Montgomery: Brown Printing Co., [ND, but ca. 1919-1920].
8-1/2 x 14,” printed on news stock. Folded once, else fine.
When Congress passed the Susan B. Anthony Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification, anti-suffrage forces in Alabama organized themselves around Senators John H. Bankhead and Oscar W. Underwood. A group of women under the leadership of Mrs. James Pinckard formed the Southern Women’s Anti-Ratification League. The League sent a statement to the Alabama legislature, which opened with “We look with confidence to you to protect us from this device of northern Abolitionists.” The broadside relies on the same wellspring of anti-black sentiment to sway readers. The broadside attacks the woman suffrage movement as sacrilegious and pro-negro. From its leaders may be inferred the quality of the cause: Elizabeth Cady Stanton was “an agitator of the fanatical type” whose Women’s Bible “tore the Good Book into shreds from Genesis to Revelations” and Susan B. Anthony was “a rabid hater of the Southern people...and an absolute worshiper of the negro...” As for Anna Howard Shaw, “her intellectual development is decidedly mediocre.” “Moreover, ..”.don't forget that among its most earnest advocates are all Mormons, all Socialists, all Feminists, negro preachers and negro school teachers. A nice bunch for ladies to be associated with even politically.” The broadside concludes with a passage by Charles L. Dana (1852-1935), neurologist, in which he describes suffragists as obsessive: “Measured by fair rules of intelligence testing, I should say that the average zealot in the cause has about the mental age of 11.” J.B. Evans” may be Judge Joe Evans whom the History Of Woman Suffrage names as one of Alabama’s chief opponents of the woman suffrage amendment. Alabama’s anti-suffrage forces were successful; its legislature declined to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. A good example of the kind of anti-suffrage arguments and language deployed in Southern states. History Of Woman Suffrage, VI, pp. 3-9.
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