The Pennsylvania state equal rights league and the northern black struggle for legal equality, 1864-1877

Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

Volumn 126, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 612-634

  Davis, Hugh ^a  

^a SOUTHERN CONNECTICUT STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61349170744     PISSN: 00314587     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (127)

1. See Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York, 1988)
2. John Hope Franklin, Reconstruction after the Civil War (Chicago, 1961)
3. For studies that devote some attention to northern equal rights activists, see, for example, David A. Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line, 1860-1915 (Urbana, Ill., 1976)
4. David M. Katzman, Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century (Urbana, Ill., 1973)
5. Arthur O. White, "The Black Movement Against Jim Crow Education in Lockport, New York, 1835-1876," New York History 50 (1969), 265-82
6. Leigh Dana Johnson, "Equal Rights and the Heathen Chinee': Black Activism in San Francisco," Western Historical Quarterly 11 (1980), 57-68
7. Marion Thompson Wright, "Negro Suffrage in New Jersey, 1776-1875," Journal of Negro History 33 (1948), 168-224
8. Thomas A. Sanelli, "The Struggle for Black Suffrage in Pennsylvania, 1838-1870" (Ph.D. diss., Temple University, 1977)
9. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Negro Population, 1790-1915 (Washington, D.C., 1918), 51
10. See Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 (Chicago, 1961), 64-77, 91-97
11. James Oliver Horton, Free People of Color: Inside the African American Community (Washington, D.C., 1993), 51-52
12. Forrest G. Wood, Black Scare: The Racist Response to Emancipation and Reconstruction (Berkeley, Calif., 1968), 1-15
13. Horton, Free People of Color, 50-51, 61, 71-72
14. Litwack, North of Slavery, 103-11, 250-67
15. Robert Mittrick, "A History of Negro Voting in Pennsylvania During the Nineteenth Century" (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1985), 44-45
16. Howard H. Bell, "Expressions of Negro Militancy in the North, 1840-1860," Journal of Negro History 45 (1960), 11-20
17. See, for example, Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, "Confrontation and Abolition in the 1850s," Journal of American History 58 (1972), 923-37
18. Floyd John Miller, The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization, 1787-1863 (Urbana, 111., 1975)
19. Robert Purvis, Speeches and Letters ([Philadelphia, Pa.,?], 1898), 4
20. see also Catherine M. Hanchett, "George Boyer Vashhon, 1824-1878
21. Black Educator, Poet, Fighter for Equal Rights: Part Two," Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 68 (1985), 333-35
22. William Cheek and Aimee Lee Cheek, John Mercer Langston and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1829-65 (Urbana, 111., 1989), 418-19
23. David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass' Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (Baton Rouge, La., 1989), 157-66, 181-82
24. Weekly Anglo-African, Jan. 31, 1863
25. Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War (New York, 1953), 184-93
26. John Jones, The Black Laws of Illinois and a Few Reasons Why They Should Be Repealed (Chicago, 1864)
27. Proceedings of the National Convention of Colored Men, Held in the City of Syracuse, October 4, 5, 6, and 7, 1864
28. with the Bill of Wrongs and Rights, and the Address to the American People (Boston, 1864), 19-28
29. Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker, eds., Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1840-1865, vol. 1, New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio (Philadelphia, 1979), 161-66
30. Vincent Harding, There Is a River. The Black Struggle for Freedom in America (New York, 1981), 248-49
31. Foner and Walker, Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1840-1865, 160-61, 165-66
32. Hanchett, "George Boyer Vashon, 1824-1878," 336
33. See minutes of the executive committee, Sept. 5, Dec. 3, 1860, Feb. 1863, Feb. 18, 1867, Records of the Social, Civic, and Statistical Association of the Colored People of Pennsylvania, Leon Gardiner Collection on Negro History, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Philip S. Foner, "The Battle to End Discrimination against Negroes on Philadelphia Streetcars," Pennsylvania History 40 (1973), 261-92, 355-79
34. Ira V. Brovvn, The Negro in Pennsylvania (University Park, Pa., 1970), 46-47
35. William D. Kelley, Why Colored People in Philadelphia Are Excluded from the Streetcars (Philadelphia, 1866), 3-5
36. James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton, 1964), 233-35
37. First Annual Meeting of the National Equal Rights League, Held in Cleveland, Ohio, October 19th, 20th, and 21st, 1865 (Philadelphia, 1865), 51-52
38. Sanelli, "Black Suffrage in Pennsylvania," 232, 240-42
39. Janice Sumler Lewis, "The Fortens of Philadelphia: An Afro-American Family and Nineteenth-Century Reform" (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 1978), 205-9
40. Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (New York, 1996) 225-32
41. Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848-1869 (luSaca, N.Y., 1978), 68-70
42. W. H. Robinson to White, July 25, 1867
43. J. W. Webb to White, July 30, 1866
44. Jacob C. White Collection; William M. Strother to Jacob C. White Jr., Nov. 5, 1866, Records of the PSERL
45. William E. Welch to White, Dec. 6, 1868
46. B.J. Wilson to White, Feb. 11, 1866
47. William Nesbit to White, Sept. 5, 1865
48. Oliver Reynolds to White, Jan. 13, Dec. 27, 1869
49. Jacob C. White Collection; I. Franchett to Jacob C. White Jr., Dec. 10, 1868, Records of the PSERL
50. Clarence Walker has reminded us that northern blacks had long been divided on a number of personal and ideological issues. Deromanticizing Black History. Critical Essays and Reappraisals (Knoxville, 1991), xvi
51. Christian Recorder, Nov. 25, 1865, Feb. 23, 1867
52. Brown, The Negro in Pennsylvania, 52
53. Litwack, North of Slavery, 113-5, 133-35
54. Edward T. Price Jr., "School Segregation in Nineteenth-Century Pennsylvania," Pennsylvania History 43 (1976), 124-5
55. Christian Recorder, Feb. 27, 1869, April 9, 1870
56. Proceedings of the State Equal Rights Convention of the Colored People of Pennsylvania, Held in the City of Harrisburg, February 8th, 9th, and 10th, 1865.... (Philadelphia, 1865), 19-21
57. On the concerns of black parents regarding desegregation, see Leslie H. Fishel Jr., "The North and the Negro, 1865-1900: A Study in Race Discrimination" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1953), 207-8, 213
58. Carleton Mabee, Black Education in New York State: From Colonial to Modern Times (Syracuse, 1979), 100-2
59. Spencer R. Crew, Black Life in Secondary Cities: A Comparative Analysis of the Black Communities of Camden and Elizabeth, N.J., 1860-1920 (New York, 1993), 130-31
60. John Roy Squibb, "Roads to Plessy: Blacks and the Law in the Old Northwest, 1860-1896" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1992), 193
61. Painter, Sojourner Truth, 225-32
62. DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage, 68-70
63. First Annual Meeting of the National Equal Rights League...1865, 43
64. Christian Kecorder, July 21, 1866
65. Price, "School Segregation in Nineteenth-Century Pennsylvania," 125
66. Brown, "Pennsylvania and the Rights of the Negro, 1865-1887,"
67. Pennsylvania History 28 (1961), 51-52. African Americans across the North achieved little success in their efforts to persuade state legislatures to grant them political rights. Only in Minnesota and Iowa-both with miniscule black populations - was suffrage enacted by popular vote. In all other northern states where the issue was voted on by the legislature or in a popular referendum, it lost by a decisive margin, even where Republicans constituted a majority of voters or controlled both legislative houses.
68. See, for example, Gary Libman, "Minnesota and the Struggle for Black Suffrage, 1849-1870
69. A Study in Party Motivation" (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1972), 117-86
70. Robert R. Dykstra, Bright Radical Star: Black Freedom and White Supremancy on the Hawkeye Frontier (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 219-28
71. Fishel, "The North and the Negro, 1865-1900," 83-103
72. Eugene H. Berwanger, The West and Reconstruction (Urbana, Ill., 1981), 158, 163-69
73. William Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869-1879 (Baton Rouge, La., 1979), 8-9
74. Arthur R. Marshall, "The Negro in Illinois Politics, 1865-1870: A Study of the Race Issue in Illinois During Reconstruction" (M.A. thesis, Univ. of Maryland, 1977), 31-36
75. Felice A. Bonadio, North of Reconstruction: Ohio Politics, 1865-1870 (New York, 1970), 93-104
76. Minutes of the executive board, Sept. 4, Nov. 10, Dec. 6, 1866, Records of the PSERL; Christian Recorder, Sept. 15, 1866; Wright, "Negro Suffrage in New Jersey," 208-12
77. Weekly Anglo-African, Oct. 20, 1865
78. Christim Recorder, Sept. 24, Dec. 23, 1865, Feb. 17, 1866
79. William Nesbit to Jacob C. White Jr., Sept. 27, 1865, Records of the PSERL;
80. George T. Downing to Frederick Douglass, 1866, Jan. 18, 1866, Frederick Douglass Papers, Library of Congress
81. George T. Downing and John Jones to Charles Sumner, Feb. 1, 1866, Charles Sumner Papers, Harvard University
82. William Nesbit to White, March 5, 1866, Jacob C. White Collection;
83. William D. Kelley to William Nesbit, March 14, 1866, Records of the PSERL
84. Ira V. Brown, "William D. Kelley and Radical Reconstruction," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 85 (1961), 321-23.
85. William Gillette, The Right to Vote: Politics and the Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment (Baltimore, 1969), 29-31
86. William E. Nelson, The Fourteenth Amendment: From Political Principle to Judicial Doctrine (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 195-96; Christian Recorder, Jan. 19, 1867
87. Lawrence Grossman, The Democratic Party and the Negro: Northern and National Politics, 1868-1892 (Urbana, Ill., 1976), 1-4, 14-22
88. Jerome Mushkat, The Reconstruction of the New York Democracy, 1861-1874 (East Brunswick, N.J., 1981), 118-27
89. Historians who emphasize the Republicans' reliance on principle include McPherson, The Struggle for Equality, 333-34
90. and John and LaWanda Cox, "Negro Suffrage and Republican Politics: The Problem of Motivation in Reconstruction Historiography," Journal of Southern History 33 (1967), 303-30.
91. Gillette, Retreat from Reconstruction, 1869-1879, 17-18
92. and Bonadio, North of Reconstruction, 106, argue that Republicans were motivated especially by expediency
93. Xi Wang, The Trial of Democracy. Black Suffrage and Northern Republicans, 1860-1910 (Athens, Ga., 1997), 24-27 passim
94. see also Foner, Reconstruction, 470-71
95. Christian Recorder, March 20, 1869; also Earl M. Maltz, Civil Rights, the Constitution, and Congress, 1863-1869 (Lawrence, Kans., 1990), 138
96. Berwanger, The West and Reconstruction, 250. The PSERL labeled the 1868 Republican platform on black suffrage "the old pernicious doctrine of states rights." Minutes of the executive board, April 2, 1868, Records of the PSERL. The Radical Republicans agreed with this assessment
97. Joseph Bustill to Sumner, Jan. 2, 1867
98. Charles Sumner Papers; William Nesbit to Jacob C. White Jr., Nov. 25, 1868
99. White to William D. Kelley, Dec. 7, 1868
100. Nesbit to Jacob C. White Jr., Nov. 25, 1868, Records of the PSERL; Forten to Sumner, Feb. 1, 1869, Charles Sumner Papers
101. Gillette, The Right to Vote, 46-91, 166-80 passim; Maltz, Civil Rights, the Constitution, and Congress, 1863-1869, 122-56
102. Wang, The Trial of Democracy, 42-48
103. Schuyler Colfax, Jan. 23, 30, 1869, John Mercer Langston Papers, Library of Congress; National Anti-Slavery Standard, Jan. 23, 30, 1869
104. Lavalette to White, July 20, 1869, Jacob C. White Collection; Brown, The Negro in Pennsylvania, 50. But Pennsylvania did not bring its constitution into conformity with the U.S. Constitution by deleting the word "white" until 1873. Mittrick, "Negro Voting in Pennsylvania," 66-67
105. National Anti-Slavery Standard, Sept. 25, 1869; Christian Recorder, Sept. 25, 1869; Minutes of the executive board, Aug. 17, 18, 1869, William A. Lavalette to Jacob C. White Jr., Records of the PSERL
106. Christian Recorder, May 5, 1870
107. Roger Lane, Roots of Violence in Black Philadelphia, 1860-1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 55
108. Lane, Roots of Violence, 45-47, 53-54
109. Harry C. Silcox, "Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia Black Militant: Octavius V. Catto (1839-1871)," Pennsylvania History 44 (1977), 74-76
110. Philadelphia Press, Oct. 12, 1870
111. Silcox, "Philadelphia Black Militant," 74-76
112. A. K. McClure, Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1905), 2:285-88
113. House, Memorial of National Convention of Colored Persons, 43d Cong., 1st sess., 1873, H. Misc. Doc. 44, 1-4
114. Christian Recorder, Aug. 31, 1872
115. New National Era, Oct. 24, 1872
116. Gerald G. Eggert, "Two Steps Forward, a Step-and-a-Half Back': Harrisburg's African American Community in the Nineteenth Century," in Joe William Trotter Jr. and Eric Ledell Smith, eds., African Americans in Pennsylvania: Shifting Historical Perspectives (University Park, Pa., 1997), 244
117. Christian Recorder, April 1, 1875
118. Philip S. Foner, Frederick Douglass (New York, 1964), 269-70, 320-21
119. Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line, 1860-1915, 218-22
120. Eievator, July 8, 1874
121. Christian Recorder, Aug. 9, 1877
122. Roger D. Bridges, "Equality Deferred: Civil Rights for Illinois Blacks, 1865-1885," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 84 (Summer 1981), 99-100
123. Grossman, The Democratic Party and the Negro, 38-40, 63-64, 80-81
124. Grossman, "In His Veins Coursed No Bootlicking Blood: The Career of Peter H. Clark," Ohio History 86 (spring 1977), 85-88
125. William Still, An Address on Voting and Laboring, Delivered at Concert Hall, Tuesday Evening, March 10th, 1874 (Philadelphia, 1874), 5-10
126. J. S. Newby to Still, March 1874, William Still Papers, Leon Gardiner Collection on Negro History, Historical Society of Pennsylvania
127. Mittrick, "Negro Voting in Pennsylvania," 96-97; Philadelphia Press, Feb. 9, Aug. 21, 1875