American Equal Rights Association - History

History

Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony proposed the idea at an American Anti-Slavery Society meeting in Boston in January 1866. Stone had been involved with abolitionism through the American Anti-Slavery Society for 18 years, and had shifted her energies mainly to women's rights issues. Anthony's focus was primarily women's suffrage. The goal was to unite the energies of the two movements and focus on the common goal of universal suffrage. Anthony, Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frederick Douglass founded the group.

Three weeks prior to the first AERA meeting, on May 10, 1866 in New York City, the eleventh National Women's Rights Convention was called to order by Stanton. A stirring speech against racial discrimination was given by African-American activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, in which she said "...You white women speak here of rights. I speak of wrongs. I, as a colored woman, have had in this country an education which has made me feel as if I were in the situation of Ishmael, my hand against every man, and every man's hand against me..." Anthony and Stanton had begun to be perceived by some as elitist or racist, as being less concerned with the underprivileged.