Kelly Miller Quotes

Women shall have the same rights and privileges under the law as men in the exercise of suffrage ... and in all other respects.

American women who know the history of this country will always resent the fact that American men chose to enfranchise Negroes fresh from slavery before enhancing their wives and mothers.

It is also unsatisfactory to some, that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.

To-day is holden at Worcester [MA] the "Woman's Convention." I think that as long as they have not equal rights of property and right of voting they are not on the right footing.

Votes for women didn’t come until the 1920’s. Votes for Blacks didn’t effectively come until the 1960’s.

I would rather have President Roosevelt say one word to Congress in favor of amending the Constitution to give women the suffrage than to praise me endlessly!

Suffrage is the pivotal right.

Women ought to be fully guarded by law in all rights of property, labor, profession, etc.; but, roughly stated, the voting population ought to represent the fighting population.

We women of America tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million women are denied the right to vote.

If white America is ready to extend complete democratic rights to colored people, there will be no race, no racial tension and no racial prejudice on either side, but we can be sure that any movement 'back to normalcy' in race relations will be bitterly resisted by colored people. It is now up to white America to make its choice...

The great majority of women are more intelligent, better educated, and far more moral than multitudes of men whose right to vote no man questions.

I am not ... in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them ... to intermarry with white people.

This nation ... has not yet reached the point of giving all men their rights by a suffrage amendment; three-fourths of the States are not ready

This House is not prepared to enfranchise all men.

Give women the vote, and in five years there will be a crushing tax on bachelors.

Negro suffrage is political arsenic. If it is not, why do not the free States open wide their throats and gulp down the graceful and invigorating draught?

Naturally I knew it was ridiculous to deprive half the people of the country of any voice in the laws they had to live under, merely on account of a trifling difference in sex, but I did not think anything I could do about it was likely to be helpful.

I go for sharing the privileges of government who assist in the bearing the burdens. Consequently I go for admitting all whites to the rights of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms, by no means excluding females.

If the Constitution does not allow women to vote, then the Constitution should be amended or abolished.

If women can rule monarchies they should vote in republics.

Woman suffrage has made little difference beyond doubling the number of voters. There is no woman’s vote as such. They divide up just about as men do.

I claim, and fear no contradiction, that the women of this land are better qualified to exercise the suffrage with intelligence, honesty and patriotism than were any other class of citizens in the world at the time when it was conferred upon them.

Women are citizens, children are citizens; but they do not exercise the elective franchise by virtue of their citizenship.

Women were really the backbone of the civil rights movement, although the leadership was predominantly male. At the rallies, the audience was women and children. The platform was predominantly men.

There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it was before.