Race-gender split traced to adoption of 15th Amendment

ELLEN GOODMAN ("The Democratic food fight," Op-ed, May 23) raises crucial questions about the divisive issues of race and gender in the current Democratic primary campaign -questions that only future historians may be able to answer.

Historical parallels are always flawed, but our present agonizing over these contentious issues recalls the tragic developments in the post-Civil War period. For many years, leaders of the women's rights movement, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, had been staunch supporters of the anti-slavery/civil rights movement and its most prominent leader, Frederick Douglass. In turn, Douglass championed the women's cause partly because he believed in its principles, partly because he understood the importance of maintaining a strong political alliance.

However, this alliance tragically fell apart over strategies and priorities in pushing for the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment, which in 1870 gave the right to vote only to male African-Americans but excluded all women.

The historian William S. McFeely correctly calls it "one of the saddest divorces in American history" that was characterized by ugliness and name-calling on both sides.

Now, 140 years later, remnants of the old sentiments are still just below the surface as we try to sort out whether it is more important to break the ultimate glass ceiling for women or to take a giant step toward overcoming a heritage of racism and slavery. The power of history is such that we cannot, in one political season, discard its burden.

CHRISTOPH LOHMANN, Nantucket
The writer is professor emeritus of American studies at Indiana University.