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The Smithsonian Institution’s museums have been in the news lately because President Trump has ordered a review of their programming and exhibits. I understand why.

In 2019, I was a consultant for the committee celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment that granted all women in all states the right to vote in 1920. Asked to write an article for the Smithsonian, I featured Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in my 1,000-word article.

When the article came back from the Smithsonian’s editors, I was shocked. They insisted that I include a chapter in Susan B. Anthony’s life that suggested she was a racist and that it would be wrong to omit it.

I looked into what they were talking about and could not with integrity describe her that way. In fairness, I know a lot more about her now than I did then, but my opinion has only gotten stronger over the years since.

Below is a video explaining what happened.

This video is also on Tiktok and YouTube.

In the decade before the Civil War, there was momentum for women winning the right to vote through Congressional legislation. Suffragists supporting women’s voting rights were also abolitionists who opposed slavery. These women leaned into their abolitionists’ views during the Civil War from 1861 to 1865.

Susan B. Anthony, a New York teacher, led a petition campaign where she gathered signatures from thousands of Americans calling for President Abraham Lincoln and Congress to abolish slavery. These petitions gave Lincoln the mandate he was looking for to issue his Emancipation Proclamation.

After the Civil War, the suffragists expected members of Congress to pass legislation for women’s voting rights as they had promised. But instead these congressmen went back on their word. Essentially the political will was only strong enough to grant black men the right to vote through constitutional amendments, not women regardless of skin color. The word male was put into the Constitution for the first time when the 14th Amendment described voters as the “male inhabitants of such State ... twenty-one-years of age” and “citizens of the United States.” Even one of Anthony’s staunchest allies from the beginning of the suffrage movement, Frederick Douglass, abandoned the women. Needless to say, the suffragists were devastated.

So what did Susan B. Anthony do? She and Elizabeth Cady Stanton realized that they were going to have to lobby for change at the local and state level, going state-by-state to change state laws. This meant that they would have to do something shocking at the time: reach across the political and regional aisle and work with and convince Southern Democrats.

It was at this point that they took money from some Southern Democrats who partially supported their position on women’s voting rights. Anthony and Stanton wanted voting rights for all men and all women regardless of color. Some of these Democrats supported literacy tests for voters. This meant that they were comfortable giving their educated wives and daughters the right to vote, but not their former female slaves. This is obviously a racist view but I did not see evidence that Anthony approved of this viewpoint. I found the opposite.

In looking at a 40,000-ft view of Anthony’s life, I could not characterize Susan B. Anthony the way the Smithsonian wanted me to characterize her. To do so was to smear her and imply that she was a racist. Her views on abolition were too strong. I withdrew my name and my article.

In response to this incident, I dug in and ended up writing a book about suffragists called Resilience on Parade: Short Stories of Suffragists Women’s Battle for the Vote.

The more I researched Anthony, the more convinced I became that she was not a racist but was ahead of her time. After the Civil War, Anthony gave speeches to the Equal Rights Party and civil rights organizations.

“Women and colored men are loyal, liberty-loving citizens, and we cannot believe that sex or complexion should be any ground for civil or political degradation. Against such outrage on the very name of a republic we do and ever must protest,” Anthony said in a speech.

She made her point very clear. Race and sex should not be grounds for political 9 discrimination. Anthony protested this very loudly and clearly after the Civil War.

“We respectfully and earnestly pray that, in restoring the foundations of our nationality, all discriminations on account of sex or race may be removed; and that our government may be republican in fact as well as form; A GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE, AND THE WHOLE PEOPLE; FOR THE PEOPLE, AND THE WHOLE PEOPLE.”  -- Ida Harper, Life & Work Susan B. Anthony, 1899.

If I had known about some of these speeches, I might have convinced the Smithsonian. But I doubt it. They seemed to be pretty entrenched. This was not the first time I have faced viewpoint discrimination. But President Trump’s announcement of the Smithsonian review has given me a reason to talk about it publicly for the first time.

President Trump is justified in ordering a review of the Smithsonian’s programming and focus. This doesn’t mean ignoring the issue of slavery. It just means that not everything is about race, and someone’s accomplishments should be paramount in the way we remember them.

Susan B. Anthony died before the passage of the 19th Amendment. The legislation featured her name as the title, a tribute to her voice and contribution.

I’m working on a keepsake book called A Great and Grateful Nation: From Grievance to Gratitude.

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