March is Women’s History Month and in celebration of that this month’s episode tells the story of the Brooklyn Equal Suffrage League, an organization of African American women who fought for their right to vote.
Interviewees—Dr. Susan Goodier, historian and co-author (with Karen Pastorello) of Women Will Vote, and Dr. Jennifer Lemak, Chief Curator of History at the New York State Museum.
Marker of Focus—Votes For Women, Kings County (Brooklyn)
For More Information—
NYS Attorney General Letitia James: Brooklyn Equal Suffrage League Marker Dedication Ceremony Address
Susan Goodier, “Sarah Smith Tompkins Garnet: A Most Remarkable Suffragist,” 2023.
Susan Goodier and Karen Pastorello, "Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State," 2017.
Jennifer Lemak and Ashley Hopkins Benton, "Votes for Women: Celebrating New York’s Suffrage Centennial," 2017.
Educator Resources—
New York State Museum: Votes for Women Educator Guide
Historical Society of the New York Courts: Women’s Suffrage
Lauren Roberts:
Welcome to a New York Minute in History. I'm Lauren Roberts, the Saratoga County Historian, and this month we have a special guest co host, Jennifer Lemak of the New York State Museum. Jennifer, can you introduce yourself?
Jennifer Lemak:
Sure, my name is Jennifer Lemak, and I am the Chief Curator of History at the New York State Museum, where I oversee 5 million history artifacts that relate to New York state history. We work to preserve New York state history through exhibitions and publications and public programs.
Lauren Roberts:
Very cool. Well, thank you so much for being here, and it is March. So this is Women's History Month, and in honor of that, the sign that we're going to focus on this month is from the National votes for women trail. This is an organization that partners with the William G Pomeroy foundation to provide a special series of markers that specifically talk about the women's suffrage movement. And this isn't specific to New York State. This is across the country. There are 209 of these signs listed on the William G Pomeroy marker map, and 30 of those are in New York state. Now they're pretty distinct. They have a purple color with kind of a tannish border around them, and of course, the the purple is a nod to the colors that are common to the women's suffrage movement. But they're they're different. You can pick them out from the traditional blue and yellow markers, so that you know when you see a marker of this color. This is part of the national votes for women trail. And the marker, specifically that we're talking about today, is located at 405 Carlton Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. It is on the side of a former YMCA building, which is it's currently a rehabilitation and nursing center. But one of the problems that we face in very populated places like New York City is there's not a lot of room on the sidewalk to have a traditional marker that we would think of here in the capital region on a pole. So in this case, the marker is actually on the side of the building itself, and you'll see that throughout New York City. So the text reads votes for women, African American women, led by President Dr Verena Morton Jones, used this former YMCA in 1908 as headquarters of the equal suffrage League of Brooklyn. William G Pomeroy foundation 2022 so we're going to do a bit of a deep dive into the equal suffrage League of Brooklyn. But just to set the stage. Jennifer, I'm hoping you can tell us a little bit about the women's suffrage movement, specifically in New York State, its origins. We know that this is a long movement, obviously, but if you could just kind of set us with the context, we need to figure out what's going. On by the time the equal suffrage League of Brooklyn is formed.
Jennifer Lemak:
Sure I would be happy to and one of the cool things about the suffrage movement in New York State is that it really is what's happening at the national level. We have a lot of national players from New York State and working in New York state. So it's it's really important. The suffrage movement nationally began in Seneca Falls in 1848 when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a group of women decided to hold a women's rights convention. And it was in in July in 1848 and at that convention, they decided to bring up several different rights that women were lacking in the mid 19th century. Suffrage was only one of them. And in attendance at this convention were mostly a group of women, but some men, including Frederick Douglass, who was a proponent of women's rights and women's suffrage. So after this convention, they laid out kind of a plan that would that these that women would work towards over the next, probably three decades. But the suffrage movement in 1869 splits over the 15th Amendment, and the 15th Amendment awards black men the right to vote. And there were a group of women, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony, that did not want black men to get the vote before educated and elite white women. And then there was another group of women, led by Lucy Stone and a lot of the New England suffragists, that felt that if black men got the vote first, women would naturally follow next. So the suffrage movement splits, and two suffrage organizations merge out of that, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony form the National Women's Suffrage Association, and they try to work for the suffrage. They try to work for suffrage through a federal amendment. And the other group, the American Women's Suffrage Association, which is led by Lucy Stone and The New England women, really feel that a state by state referendum, if enough states approve women's suffrage, then the federal amendment would eventually fall into place. So these two groups work in opposition for a couple decades. There's not a lot of movement over the decades past the Civil War. And by the end of the 20th century, things start to change. And we kind of talk about how the suffrage movement is a long movement, so you see multiple generations of women coming in and out of out of the movement as a whole. So what changes at the end of the 20th century? The the country looks very different than it did in 1848. The Civil War is over the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments pass, and at the end of the 20th century, we start to see a lot of industrial industrialization. We start to see a lot of new immigrants coming into the country. We got a lot of immigrants coming into New York, specifically because of the industrialization that's happening here. And we've got women working outside the home. They have more leisure time than ever before. And like I said, there's a new generation of suffrage leaders. So in 1890 we the suffrage leaders come together, and they don't really care about what happened before. They kind of want to start new so the two organizations that had split decide to merge back together and finally work together. And what is established is the National American Women's Suffrage Association, and this is an umbrella organization for all of the hundreds of smaller suffrage organizations across the country. So they push for suffrage at the state level, and they are hoping that if enough of of the state's past suffrage, then there will be a critical number that can then apply for the Federal amendment. So that's kind of what we get at the at the end of the 20th century, and at the the local level, we have a lot of women working through organized. Organized clubs, which is where our marker comes in today, and the Brooklyn Equal Suffrage League.
So, what is a women's club? And women got together to not just organize for suffrage. In fact, there were a lot of other reasons to get together for suffrage. There was temperance clubs. There were education reform clubs, and a lot of women got together at the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century because they were denied a formal education past grade school. So women would get together to discuss literature, discuss arts, discuss the news of the community. And some of them would work towards different reforms, domestic reform, temperance. And once you get into the 1910s and the early 1910s some and a lot of them start to turn towards meeting and talking about suffrage, so we start to get a lot of political equality clubs out of this club movement. And these, these political equality clubs that were established kind of fed into larger umbrella organizations like the New York State suffrage Women's Suffrage Association. So with a lot of these equality clubs, African American women were not allowed to be in the white women's clubs. So we get African American communities starting their own clubs, which is how we get the Brooklyn equal suffrage League. African American women were not allowed to join the white women's clubs, so they start their own and one of the differences between the African American clubs and the white women's clubs is that the African American clubs also want to work towards what's called, at the time, is community uplift. They were not out for just women's issues and women's equality. They wanted to help uplift the entire African American community. Because, as you know, at this time, African American men were disenfranchised across the south and a lot of places in the north as well. So a vote for women's suffrage would also help bolster the African American male community as well. The African American Women's clubs were under their own umbrella organization, similar to the white clubs, and it was the National Association of women's clubs with what I think is probably one of the best mottos, lifting as we climb. And they were started in 1896 so these women's clubs at the beginning of the 20th century have to change. Suffrage tactics change once again. And they change because instead of staying in their clubs and staying in their in their homes, and then the you know, kind of in the private sphere, they start to go out in the public and to rally and educate the community on why suffrage is important for women. So they start to hold parades, hold speeches. They start picketing the White House, which was unheard of at the time, and a lot of folks just gasped when anybody dared picket the White House, let alone, you know, a handful of women. So they started to lobby politicians here in Albany, there were several times when women marched on the state capitol, and they were learning as they were going, because they would, after a couple times of, you know, walking on the State Capitol, they then realized, well, if I call the local papers and the local papers report on this, we get all that publicity across the state or across the nation. So the tactics became much more publicly oriented so they could get the word out.
Lauren Roberts:
Now for these public displays, are these the white women's clubs mostly? Or did the African American Women's clubs also join in.
Jennifer Lemak:
It was mostly the white the white clubs, however, when they had large parades, like in New York City, the African American clubs were usually relegated to the end of the line, which really upset folks. And race was a huge. Huge struggle within the suffrage movement because because of the discrimination by the the elite white leaders. So what happens at the in you know, around 1910 1912 the leaders of the national suffrage movement and the leaders of the New York State Suffrage Movement realize for the first time that they have to work with everybody, otherwise suffrage will never pass a statewide referendum. So they start working with the recent immigrants who are a lot of them, are really pivotal in the labor rights movement. And they start working with slowly, start working with African American clubs, because if everybody didn't come together to vote for the suffrage referendum in 1915 and then again in 1917 suffrage in New York state would have never passed.
Lauren Roberts:
One of the reasons that these smaller clubs were so important to the larger movement was because they had some pretty amazing leaders. And the person who started the equal suffrage League of Brooklyn was a woman named Sarah Garnett, and she has a pretty incredible story. In order to learn more about Sarah Garnett, we spoke with author and historian Susan Goodier.
Susuan Goodier:
Sarah Garnett, born Sarah Sarah Jane Smith was born of Sylvania Sylvanus Smith and his and his wife, Anna, or Anne. She was born in July of 1831 some sources tell me because both of her parents were descended from indigenous people as well as African and white people. She was born on the Shinnecock reservation, out on Long Island. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case, because of her background. She She is descended from indigenous people as well, and the Shinnecock people have long been connected and influenced by African American people as well as and more, in a negative way from a lot of the white people. So she grows up in a family of, I think they have 13 children. She comes from family that's fairly well to do. And as a young woman, her father was able to vote. So Sarah, at a very young age, is asked to help as a kind of a proctor in the schools, and in her school, she goes to one of the so called colored schools, and she learns from a man named Peterson about who it's very difficult to find out much, but he was, he was a school principal from one of the black schools. He was a principal and he was, he had a school to educate African American women to be teachers, and Sarah Garnett becomes a teacher. She starts when she's 14 years old. Yes, Sarah Garnett was a teacher long career. Yes, she was a principal of the school, but she never seems to have been financially stable. She's always struggled. And one of the things that she did, and it appears in the research, was she had a seamstress shop. She actually worked sewing items of clothing or mending or repair work, whatever, in our own home. And the story goes that that's where the women that she brought connected with where they met for their suffrage meetings movements.
Jennifer Lemak:
So, in speaking to the interconnectedness of these different reform movements, the Brooklyn equal suffrage League was affiliated with the Niagara movement, which was established in 1905 and it was the precursor to the NAACP. And both organizations were interested in passing suffrage for both men and women. White and African Americans, they wanted equal treatment. They wanted equal economic opportunities, and they wanted a compulsory education for all. So you can see that you know this, the Niagara movement and what would become the NAACP. The Brooklyn Equal Suffrage League were really in line with one another.
Lauren Roberts:
We've talked about Sarah Garnett and how integral she is to the creation of the equal suffrage League of Brooklyn, and how the club really starts in in her home and as it grows, they are forced to move to a larger location, which is is the YMCA building, where the marker is now attached. And as Sarah Garnett kind of backs down, a new woman rises to take her place, and that is Dr Verena Morton Jones, she's mentioned on the marker as the president of the club at the time that they move into this location as their headquarters, and she has a pretty amazing story herself. She is the first black female medical doctor to practice in Mississippi. She attended the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and graduated with her MD in 1888 and after moving to Mississippi, she became the first black female MD in that state. At the same time that Dr Morton Jones was leading the equal suffrage League of Brooklyn, she had other passions that she felt strongly about, including making sure that the poor were well cared for.
Jennifer Lemak:
Dr. Morton Jones, under I believe her auspices of leading the Brooklyn equal suffrage league helped to establish the Lincoln settlement house in Brooklyn in 1908 and a settlement house is basically a organization and home to help recent immigrants. Normally help recent immigrants, but the Lincoln settlement settlement house was established to provide services to help poor families in Brooklyn, in white poor families and African American families. It established a daycare for working mothers. It established a kindergarten for the local kids to attend. It offered support to working mothers, and it also offered classes for older children. So kind of a precursor to a current day Community Center, which was, you know, really there to help the community.
Lauren Roberts:
Yeah, I think it speaks to the fact that they are trying to uplift. To use your word, all of you know all of the issues that people are having moving into the city, whether an immigrant or, you know, whether affected by poverty or the lack of education, I'm sure, with her background as an MD, they she was also able to provide medical care for families that needed it, and different types of classes that would help either to prepare for a job, to care for the family, to help educate. I know they mentioned that there were debate classes and choral clubs. So, you know, not, not just utilitarian, but also, you know, for people to create community within these neighborhoods.
Jennifer Lemak:
Yes, this time, it was established in 1908 and we are right on the cusp of the Great Migration when African American rural farmers are starting to move north for industrial jobs. And when those folks come to a giant city like New York or Brooklyn, they have to kind of learn how to navigate. And a settlement house would be the perfect place and offer kind of those instructions on how to get around, how to live in an urban environment when you're used to, you know, growing everything in a garden or in a giant field. So those types of skills would be offered at a settlement house.
Lauren Roberts:
So as we move into the the 1910s and teens, we see movement on the state referendums. Of course, New York state passes the women's suffrage referendum in 1917 they're not the first state, obviously, but, but they do pass it before the federal law goes into effect—
Jennifer Lemak:
But they are the most politically important state. So there are a lot of the national leaders that, I mean, there are quotes that say, as soon as New York falls, the rest of the states will fall, like, like, a line of domino, dominoes. So it is super important.
Lauren Roberts:
It's funny, they used the terminology that it falls, you know, like, um. Yeah. So we see that these clubs are successful, that the convergence of working together between African American clubs and the white clubs, but also the local level to the state level, to the national level, that this finally, you know, from starting in the 1840s until the 19 teens, it's finally, you know, this cooperation and the change to industrialization and the change in our lifestyles that that really pushes the movement over the edge. And women do earn the right to vote. So we are sitting here in 2026 it's only been a little over 100 years that that women have had this right, and you and I are sitting here talking today because of the women like Verena Morton Jones and Sarah Garnett, and then, of course, the more well known leaders of the movement as well. But you know, in thinking about women's history month, and you know how important these movements have been and continue to be, right, we still need to push for equality for all, and we need to remember those leaders who came before us and and made this possible, that we have the right to vote now.
Jennifer Lemak:
From a historian's standpoint, I think it's important to talk about the underrepresented folks, not just the Elizabeth Cady Stantons and the Susan B Anthonys, because as the curator at the State Museum, I get calls all the time with materials that somebody found in their basement. And it could be an unknown New Yorker, or sometimes it's somebody really important, and they didn't realize they had the stuff. So I feel like, you know, getting folks on and in the historical record will then help establish, you know, there are other people other than, you know, the the famous ones that that really rolled their sleeves up and got the work done. And the more we can get them on the historical record, the fuller piece of of the past we'll have.
Susan Goodier:
Without African American people, without indigenous people, without Latin American women, without these women of color, you don't understand the suffrage movement. You don't understand you can't. We can't, I should say we can't. It opens up a world that's richer, more complex, more contradictory, and far more interesting and real. The other thing, I think, and the and the the message, and and, and Sarah Garnett herself stands for this because she worked across difference. She herself represented this weird people who are a mixture of people, not that we're one kind. We're a mixture. And that diversity is not only inherent to our beings, it's also inherent to what is critically necessary in our democracy. We can't have it without it. We can't have it without it. She represents that the crossing of barriers and crossing of differences right from her own, what her own genetic makeup was, and all the way through all of her life's work.
