Biographical Database of Black Woman Suffragists Biography of Sarah Jane Smith Thompson Garnet, 1831-1911

By Susan Goodier, Lecturer, State University of New York at Oneonta

Most African American women strongly supported the right of women to vote. They usually had to do so in conjunction with their other activist work, rarely able to devote their time exclusively to woman suffrage. Unfortunately, most white women’s suffrage clubs and organizations remained reluctant to include black women in the mainstream movement. Complicating our understanding of black women’s suffrage activism, very little evidence of activist work on the part of black suffragists exists in the archives. To appreciate black women’s activism for suffrage, we have to understand that it does not always parallel—or integrate neatly with—white women’s suffrage activism. Rather, black women did not separate political rights for women from other rights they considered necessary. Black women saw the potential of the vote “as a cure from many of their ills”—as a way to promote education, alleviate “sexual exploitation,” end prostitution and other “moral evils,” challenge black men’s disenfranchisement, and support workers’ rights—supporting women’s enfranchisement for reasons similar to those of white women.1 Having to confront racism at virtually every level complicated, but did not suppress, the suffrage movement for African American women.

As the suffrage movement dragged on to the dawn of the twentieth century, many white suffragists began to endorse an “expediency” theory that encouraged the exclusion of black women from voting rights. This theory promoted states’ rights, whereby individual states could determine the limits of suffrage. Under these ideas, many white suffragists could “practice racist principles without censure from other suffragists.”2 So, to promote the cause of woman suffrage, black women had to confront the societal racism they had long faced, as well as the racism more boldly justified by the movement they found essential for the uplift of their race. Among the many black women in New York State who confronted these challenges, Sarah Jane Smith Thompson Garnet stands out as a dynamic advocate of the cause of woman suffrage. Born on July 30, 1831, the first of eleven children of Sylvanus and Annie Springstead Smith, both of whom claimed Long Island Native American ancestry, Sarah Jane joined a prosperous Queens County family. The family earned a good living from farming and Sylvanus’ work as a pork merchant.3 Her maternal grandmother gave Sarah an elementary-level education, and then Sarah attended school in the

New York public school system. She must have stood out as a capable and intelligent young woman, for by the age of fourteen, she worked as a monitor under the supervision of John Peterson.4 Like many other educated black women of her time, Sarah Smith decided on a career in teaching.

She began teaching in the nearby Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg in 1854. Around the same time, she married the Episcopal reverend James Thompson and bore two children, neither of whom survived to adulthood.5 Her personal life did not seem to interfere with her career, as she became the first black principal of an integrated New York public school, the Manhattan Grammar School No. 4, on April

30, 1863. Eventually she moved on to Public School No. 80 as a principal, a position she kept until her retirement in 1900; she worked in education for a remarkable fifty years.6 In addition to her full-time work as a school administrator, she operated a seamstress shop in her home from 1883 to 1911.

James Thompson died in the late 1860s, and in 1879 Sarah Smith Thompson married the well- known abolitionist and minister Henry Highland Garnet. Henry Garnet served at the time as minister of the Shiloh Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn. The marriage does not seem to have been a particularly successful one; according to one source, the couple separated after only a year.7 Subsequently, Henry

Garnet left the United States by himself to serve as ambassador to Liberia, dying in Monrovia in 1882.

Sarah Garnet, again widowed, focused her energies on her activism for suffrage and other feminist causes.

Garnet believed that women had the “same human intellectual and spiritual capabilities as men,” and that no democracy should deny women the right to vote.8 Her activism manifested itself at both the local and national levels. On the local level, Garnet, with her younger sister Susan Maria Smith

McKinney Steward, the first black female physician to practice in New York State, and others, founded the Colored Women’s Equal Suffrage League of Brooklyn in the late 1880s, holding meetings in her seamstress shop in the back of her home. The group met to discuss voting and citizenship rights for women. When the league became too popular to continue meeting in Garnet’s home, they adjourned to the local church or YMCA on Carlton Avenue.9 Most meetings opened with a musical performance, followed by speeches presented by members or special guests, and closed with a report relating the group’s accomplishments since the previous meeting. Although ostensibly a women’s club, men attended many of the meetings.

The league held a memorial service for Susan B. Anthony in April 1906 where both black and white women spoke in memory of the suffrage leader.10 They honored author Harriet Beecher Stowe at another meeting a few years later.11 Sometimes the league hosted white suffragists, such as when Mary E. Craigie spoke at a league meeting. Arguing that “we are all bound together by the ties of humanity,” she contended that women wanted the right to vote because “we want to be human individuals.”12 On another occasion the league enjoyed the speech of Anne Cobden-Sanderson of London, who also “listened with deep interest to Mrs. S. J. S. Garnet, who told of the efforts of the black women to organize and assist with the women’s suffrage work.”13

The league also participated in political playacting. For example, in July 1908, members held a mock national Republican convention, and Garnet, appointed as the “one woman delegate,” voted for the controversial Joseph B. Foraker, who disagreed with Theodore Roosevelt over the Brownsville Affair two years before, whereby Roosevelt had dismissed an entire black battalion for allegedly terrorizing a town in Texas.14 League members assisted with preparations for helping to host a meeting of the National

Association of Colored Women, held the same summer.15 Although Sarah Garnet gave up her role as president of the Equal Suffrage League to another prominent African American suffragist and activist, Dr.

Verina Morton-Jones, she consistently attended its meetings. The newspapers often referred to Garnet as the league’s “leading spirit.”16 Garnet also worked for woman suffrage and racial uplift at the national level. As a member of the National Association of Colored Women, Garnet served as head of the special suffrage division. In this capacity, she helped educate members of the association about woman suffrage, distributing literature and giving speeches. Garnet gave “an excellent talk” on woman suffrage at the fourth convention of the association in St. Louis, Missouri, in July 1904. The association represented about forty thousand women and worked to overcome some of the racist and sexist challenges black women faced. She also served as superintendent of the National Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs.17

At every opportunity, Garnet promoted the woman suffrage cause.

Like most black women suffragists, Garnet also worked for social justice in other fields. She sought to end race-based discrimination against African American teachers and advocated for equal pay for women and better retention for educators. According to the biography written by prominent educator,

Maritcha Remond Lyons, Garnet, accompanied by Bishop W. B. Derrick and the lawyer T. McCants

Stewart, traveled to Albany to “confront the legislature with indisputable facts” regarding the discrimination black teachers faced.18 Garnet maintained an active schedule to improve the education of black children. She also worked for this goal nationally as a member of the National Teachers’

Association, one of very few African American women who belonged to the organization. In addition, she served as a manager for the Howard Orphan Asylum.19

Garnet attended the anti-lynching event with Ida B. Wells and other activists, held in October 1892 at Lyric Hall in New York City. The event, organized by Sarah Garnet, her sister, Dr. Susan McKinney,

Victoria Earle Matthews of the White Rose Working Girls Home, and Maritcha Lyons, drew 250 supporters. The women contributed $500 so that Wells could write her anti-lynching pamphlet, Southern

Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. Following the meeting, Garnet, McKinney, Lyons, Matthews,

Elizabeth Frazer, and others organized the Women’s Loyal Union of New York and Brooklyn to continue

Wells’ anti-lynching work, with Matthews serving as president. Its focus included education for African

Americans and the “desire to increase their happiness in every way consistent with law and reason.”20

Woman suffrage would help to achieve all the goals of the Loyal Union.

In 1911 Garnet and her sister, Susan McKinney Steward, traveled to the University of London to attend the first meeting of the Universal Races Congress, held July 26 to 29, so that Steward could present a paper, “Colored American Women.” While in London, she listened to other activists who discussed the status of people of color outside of the United States and gathered information on various topics, including woman suffrage. Upon their return to Brooklyn, the Colored Women’s Suffrage League held a welcome home reception for Garnet in her home on September 7. In addition to the usual playing of music and reading of poetry, several attendees read papers. Susan Steward read the paper she had presented at the London Congress. Garnet distributed the suffrage material she had collected. People in attendance included Atlanta professor John Hope and his wife, Lugenia Burns Hope, W. E. B. Du Bois,

Verina Morton-Jones, and other members of the Equal Suffrage League.21

Just ten days after the reception, on September 17, 1911, Sarah J. Smith Thompson Garnet died quietly in her Hancock Street, Brooklyn, home. Suffragist and national lecturer for the YWCA, Addie

Waites Hunton and Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois spoke at her memorial service, held at the Bridge Street African

Methodist Episcopal Church on October 29, 1911, while Fannie Garrison Villard, Ida B. Wells Barnett, and others sent letters to be read at the service.

While many black women worked for the woman suffrage cause, most found white women generally excluded them from attending their suffrage meetings. Nevertheless, black activists refused to back away from the goal of political enfranchisement, rarely separating their goals related to political equality from their other goals for economic and social equity. By promoting political education, as well as the full engagement and support of black men in the political process, black women’s suffrage activism aided the mainstream suffrage cause.

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This essay appeared originally as “’Bound Together by the Ties of Humanity’: Sarah Jane Smith

Thompson Garnet.” In Votes for Women: Celebrating New York’s Suffrage Centennial (Albany, NY: State

University of New York Press, 2017), pp. 50-53, and it appears here by permission of the State University of New York Press.

Notes 1. Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in

America (New York: Bantam Books, 1984), 121; Karen Garner, “Equal Suffrage League,” in Organizing

Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations, ed. Nina Mjagkij (New York: Garland, 2001), 224; Mrs. Sarah J. S. Garnet, Seventh Report, file #358, New York City Municipal

Archives, New York, NY.

2. Giddings, When and Where I Enter, 127.

3. Hallie Q. Brown, Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1988), 111.

4. Carla L. Peterson, Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century

New York City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 355–356.

5. Maritcha Lyons, Garnet’s biographer, seems to have misremembered the reverend’s name, stating it as “Tompkins.” Some historians have repeated this error. Brown, Homespun Heroines, 114.

6. Brown, Homespun Heroines, 112; Mrs. Sarah J. S. Garnet, Seventh Report, file #358, New York

City Municipal Archives, New York, NY.

7. Peterson, Black Gotham, 356.

8. Garner, “Organizing Black America,” 224; Peterson, Black Gotham, 355–356.

9. The Brooklyn and Queens YMCA Carlton Avenue Branch, the first branch in Brooklyn for

African Americans, opened in 1902 and closed in 1955. http://special.lib.umn.edu/findaid/html/ymca/ygny0025.phtml (accessed 2 April 2015).

10. “Susan B. Anthony Memorial,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1 April 1906, 22.

11. “Honor Harriet B. Stowe,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 16 June 1910, 6.

12. “Mrs. Craigie Wants to Vote,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 29 April 1907, 5.

13. “Afro-American Notes,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 5 January 1908, 22.

14. “Afro-American Notes,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1 July 1908, 8.

15. “Afro-American Notes,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 29 May 1908, 13.

16. “Afro-American Notes,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 5 January 1908, 22.

17. Report of the “Fourth Convention of the National Association of Colored Women,” p. 29,

Microfilm, Burke Library, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY; “Civilization in Africa,” Brooklyn Daily

Eagle, 9 February 1906, 10. 18. Brown, Homespun Heroines, 115.

19. “For Colored Orphans,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 16 December 1892, 9; “Howard Orphan

Asylum,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 16 October 1900, 13.

20. “Colored Women Organize,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 21 February 1893, 4.

21. “News of Greater New York,” New York Age, 14 September 1911, 7; Brown, Homespun

Heroines, 116.