Race Rhymes

Abstract

By 1912, Carrie Williams Clifford had built a strong reputation in the black community as a “noted suffragist.” She organized meetings about women’s voting rights in Washington, D.C. and traveled to speak on the topic in other cities. She made her case for women’s enfranchisement by drawing on ideas of women’s difference, especially their capacity as mothers. For black women, the sources of death, degradation, and destruction were not abstract concepts but the direct result of white supremacy. Concern about the racial violence aimed at their communities made their decision to fight for the vote quite different from that of white women. Clifford directed her considerable intellect and energy towards fighting “the problem of the color line” and founded several organizations committed to fighting anti-black violence and came to recognize the need for suffrage rights during those battles. To understand Clifford’s political agenda and how suffrage fit into it, it is essential to recognize how she became politicized and what her goals were.