American Equal Rights Association Memorial

The American Equal Rights Association (AERA) was formed after the Civil War to fight for equality for all blacks and women. Its leaders included Lucretia Mott, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They concluded their plea to Congress: "your memorialists most respectfully and earnestly pray that all discriminations on account of sex or race may be removed."

What brought the men and women in the AERA together—the battle for racial and gender equality—would eventually tear them apart and cast a long shadow on the woman suffrage movement. After the 14th Amendment inserted the word "male" into the Constitution, strategy over how to secure the right to vote for all created deep divisions.

Out of the AERA, two organizations formed in 1869. The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) sought to achieve woman suffrage through a Federal amendment. The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) believed that woman suffrage should be achieved state by state.

Suffragists agreed that the strongest strategy did not include divided efforts, so the organizations merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890. Black women were not officially excluded from NAWSA, but they were not always welcomed. Black women’s clubs played an important role in the woman suffrage movement. In 1896, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) was formed, joining more than 100 black women’s clubs together.