The end of the Civil War was intended to mark an end to the tensions between northern and southern states regarding slavery and minority groups. It challenged America to reevaluate their core values and create a path towards change for integration and equality. African Americans attempted to find their place in society however, the ideologies of white supremacists had been strongly set in place. This strengthened the African American Civil Rights Movement, the “freedom struggle” that challenged white supremacy. The dedication placed into this movement spread world-wide awareness and influenced other factions to develop within. This included the Women's Right’s Movement whose purpose was to advocate for equal opportunity and representation. Having these movements side be side, allowed for the analysis in their distinguishable executions but allowed for the framing for civil rights.
The African American Civil Rights Movement has been a lengthy struggle of protests, negotiations, and petitions that promoted the equality, integration, and basic rights for African Americans. These rights were acknowledged by law to any other U.S. citizen which made these restrictions prejudicial and only furthered the movement to a national level. One of the movements most notable successes included the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln which freed slaves in the Confederacy on a January 1, 1863. This was a revolutionary moment in history because it led to a series of amendments that abolished slavery, granted due process and equal protection to African Americans, and granted blacks the right to vote which are the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments respectively.
Despite these successes, there was no sign of political, economical, and educational equality or growth for African Americans because the Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation. Welling states how the Emancipation Proclamation “marks, indeed, the sharp and abrupt beginning of ‘the Great Divide’ which…has been so warmly praised on one hand, or door warmly denounced on the other” . The Proclamation ended up dividing the nation into two sections, North and South which created conflict because those who heavily relied on slave labor, did everything they could to prevent African American from getting their freedom and those who did not, did everything they could to grant them equality and freedom even if it meant seceding. These laws were one of the movements shortcomings because they imposed literacy exams, poll taxes, and clauses which intervened with their right to vote. The “separate but equal” doctrine indirectly violated the 14th amendment and with it, the progression that African Americans had created. Guffrey explains how “to many blacks and whites living in the south, racial stratification might have seemed ‘just the way it’s supposed to be’ ” which demonstrates how African Americans began to devalue themselves because their owners would take advantage of their illiteracy, vulnerability, and inferiority. They began to believe the blasphemy and mockery coming from their white owners which was a devastating setback towards the fight for their civil rights.
Women who were active in the Civil Rights Movement became interested in women’s rights because of the obvious discrimination on the basis of gender. This larger movement supported only a small portion of individuals and thus because women felt the desire to have representation, it submerged from the Civil Rights Movement. Realizing the amount of support and recognition that the movement had received, advocates took it as a model on how a successful movement should be assembled which gave women the courage needed to fight for social justice. Being classified as second-class citizens, women were expected to focus on household and familial obligations and were therefore, not persuaded to receive an education or pursue a career. They were not given equal wages for the same work men did, had no right to own their own property, and were not permitted to sign contracts. Like black men, all women were denied the right to vote. Susan B. Anthony “passionately decried the low wages paid to women workers and the limits on their independence…[and] argued that working meant more than financial survival—it symbolized independence” . Susan B. Anthony, a prominent inspirational advocate for women’s rights, demanded equal opportunity, independence, and suffrage because she did not want women to continue having a dependence on men and to continue with the subservience with whom women treated men. Considering the way they were treated to be an act of humiliation and injustice, women began utilizing the African-American movement to support their case for women’s rights and put an end to social injustice.
The Women’s Rights Movement reached its success when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott gathered the first woman's rights convention at Seneca falls in 1848.This convention gave women a platform to voice there opinions and to create a draft for demands that would grant women equal opportunities, treatment, and respect. The draft created was known as the Declaration of Sentiments which was imposed upon the federal government and was recognized as the beginning of the Suffrage Movement in the United States. After years of settlements, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone formed the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Determined to make a change, by 1900 women had suffrage in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and Idaho. By 1900, every state had granted married women the right to keep their own wages and to own property. On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified and women are finally enfranchised. Women did not consider themselves to be better than men but knew that if they did not fight for equality now, then they would never have another opportunity to do so.
There were many shortcomings that occurred after the Women’s Rights Movement due to the hierarchy that was in place which made men believe that it was their job to manage women and protect them. They took the burden of making decisions for them and placed women in a sheltered life. The way men showed their distaste for women uprising was through chauvinism and sexism. “Given that the granting of rights to women implied a weakening of men’s rights, it amounted to a voluntary renunciation of power by men…Because husbands have nothing to gain from an increase in their wives bargaining power at their own expense, men ideally want their wives to have no rights” . This emphasizes how men felt threatened about woman were gaining confidence, education, and taking their job positions. Right after women were enfranchised, the Woman's Anti-Suffrage League was formed and women were going against other women by saying that they did not have time to vote or stay updated on politics so it would be essentially useless to give them this right. Some argued that they would be unable to provide useful opinions in political issues because they had no expertise.
The Civil and the Women’s Rights Movement were both similar in that they both had activists that spoke up for the minority groups. Booker T. Washington, a prominent leader in the African-American community, had confidence in self-help and racial solidarity. He advised blacks to accept discrimination so that they could focus on improving themselves through hard work and education in industrialization. Washington argued that African Americans would win the respect of whites and would be fully accepted as citizens if they followed his ideology. W.E.B. Du Bois, founder of the NAACP, said that “if the leading Negro classes cannot assume and bear the uplift of their own proletariat, they are doomed for all time. It is not a case of ethics; it is a plain case of necessity. The method by which this may be done is, first, for the American Negro to achieve a new economic solidarity” . Du Bois promoted economic and political separatism without the assistance of white citizens because he thought that blacks were only focusing on trying to integrate into white society when they were perfectly capable of achieving there own organization through hard work. He said that African Americans should not wait to be accepted into white society but should make their own civilization to prove their capability and intelligence. Similar to the Civil Rights activists, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, two prominent activists for abolition and women’s rights, supported female activism and defied the patriarchal society by promoting gender equality. Despite being threatened with violence, they continued giving speeches on their full integration within American society.
The Civil and Women's Rights Movement both fought against discrimination and inequality by pushing for civil liberties using similar techniques of peaceful protests, organizations, and petitions. The women’s right movement had a similar method of addressing the situation because they utilized the Civil Rights Movement as a precedent to analyze the things that they should and shouldn’t do in order to amplify their objectives. Despite the opposition both movements faced, their determination and courage allowed them to push through the prejudices of the white supremacists and anti-suffragists. There continues to be racial profiling and discrimination in todays society to a certain extent but not as prominent as before and this is in honor of activists that fought for their rights.