Southern States Woman Suffrage Conference

Prominent leaders in the group included Laura Clay and Kate Gordon, who supported and focused on local and state reforms rather than a national amendment.

The group applied tactics like the Lost Cause, the belief that the Confederate cause was moral and just, and the Southern strategy, which appealed to white voters by promoting racism.

In 1866, a group of former abolitionists formed the American Equal Rights Association, an organization working to win suffrage to all, regardless of race or sex.

Angered at the specific exclusion of women by expressing the rights of men in the 15th Amendment, former AERA members Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Woman’s Suffrage Association (NWSA).

At this time, women from the South were interspersed in groups like NAWSA, forming local chapters such as the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia.

Led by Kate Gordon of Louisiana (1861-1932), these upper class Southern women believed that state-level suffrage measures would help maintain white supremacy.

Gordon opposed the push for a national amendment, and formed the Southern States Woman Suffrage Association (SSWSA) at a conference in New Orleans.

[1] Like Gordon, Laura Clay of Kentucky (1849-1941) had been a prominent member of NAWSA; however, she became distanced from the establishment because she did not fully agree with its goals, specifically its aim of a federal amendment.

"[7] In a local Tennessee newspaper, the Bristol Herald Courier, the New Southern Citizen is mentioned as reporting on the "state rights" stance of Congressmen who voted against a federal suffrage amendment.

[8] The SSWSA perceived its greatest victory to be the 1916 Democratic primary, claiming that its “states' rights suffrage” had been included in the party platform.

Known for her philanthropy towards African Americans in New York, Belmont also wrote to Laura Clay saying that she understood the SSWSA’s “eternal vigilance [on the race problem] in the southern suffrage movement”.

[10] However, the position was similar to that first claimed by the National Woman Suffrage Association and Elizabeth Cady Stanton: the 15th Amendment was an over-reach of federal intervention.