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170 & ••••••••• 69 • SBA to Isabel Howland Rochester, N.Y., October 5th, 1897. My dear;— To yours of the 28th let me say, I would be delighted to have a representative of the colored race of the South speak at our Fiftieth Anniversary celebration and also before the Congressional committee. I remember Miss Logan’s letter and was very much pleased with it and if I knew she was a splendid speaker and would just make every one of the full Anglo-Saxon women feel ashamed of their race, I would hold up both hands for her to come to Washington next February. I would not on any account bring on our platform a woman who had a ten-thousandth part of a drop of African blood in her veins, who should prove an inferior speaker either as to matter or manner, because it would so militate against the colored race. Of course we have women in our society, the Clays, 1 Mrs. Young 2 and lots of others who will come up from the south and the Congressmen and their wives in Washington who would be hopping mad if we brought colored women on our platform. We have always had Frederick Douglass and our Mrs. Harper 3 but to bring right from the south a woman who would almost be an ex-slave,would vex them more than either of these they are accustomed to seeing. So I want to leave it to your judgment and knowledge, if you know she can write a speech strong in argument, beautiful in rhetoric, and can deliver it in a splendid fashion, then let me know, and bring her to Washington. You see I do not in the slightest shrink from having a colored woman on the platform, but I do very much shrink from having an incompetent one, so unless you really know that Miss Logan is one who would astonish the natives, just let her wait until she is more cultured and can do the colored race the greatest possible credit. There is another point from which I shrink and that is, it will take just so much more money out of your aunt Emily’s 4 pocket and just at this time when it seems impossible for us to get enough to pay our ordinary expenses we cannot promise to pay them and if somebody has to pay her expenses, 5 october 1897 ^ 171 that somebody will be aunt Emily, but again I say if you and aunt Emily say Mrs. Logan is the woman and this convention is the time, let me know at your earliest convenience and we will give her a place on the programme. I talked this over with Harriet and told her to tell you. I am to be at the “May” celebration 5 and maybe you, Aunt Emily, your father and mother 6 will be down there so we can all talk this over to our hearts content. Yours lovingly, Y TL, on NAWSA letterhead for 1897, Isabel Howland Papers, MNS-S. Signed for SBA by secretary. 1. SBA refers to Laura Clay and her sisters. Although Mary Barr Clay (1839– 1924),once president of the American association while retaining her membership in the National association, was no longer conspicuous on the national scene, Sarah Lewis Clay Bennett (1841–1935), known as Sallie, was a strong proponent in the National-American of federal legislation to permit women to vote for congressmen . (American Women, s.v. “Clay, Mary Barr”; H. Edward Richardson, Cassius Marcellus Clay: Firebrand of Freedom [Lexington, Ky., 1976], 31n, with assistance of the Filson Club, Lexington, Ky. See also Papers 3–5.) 2. Virginia Durant Covington Young (1842–1906), a writer and newspaperwoman , presided over the South Carolina Equal Rights Association from its founding in 1890 until her death and led efforts to obtain woman suffrage from the state’s constitutional convention of 1895.An advocate in her home state of suffrage restricted by either educational or property qualifications, Young brought those ideas to the National-American’s annual conventions too. (A. Elizabeth Taylor, “South Carolina and the Enfranchisement of Women: The Early Years,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 77 [April 1976]: 115–26; Monica Maria Tetzlaff, Cultivating a New South: Abbie Holmes Christensen and the Politics of Race and Gender, 1852–1938 [Columbia,S.C.,2002],109–13; Senate,Committee on Woman Suffrage,Report of Hearing before the Committee on Woman Suffrage, January 28, 1896, 54th Cong., 1st sess., S. Doc. 157...

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