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54-497: In August 1898 Manly published a editorial objecting to lynchings and rejected stereotypes of black men as rapists of white women. He had earlier responded to a Rebecca Latimer Felton in Georgia who wrote about African-American males having relationships with white women. At the time, white Democrats were inflaming racial tensions and promoting white supremacy in a bid to regain power in the state legislature. They had lost control in

108-735: A carpenter, and taught his trade to Frederick. After the war Frederick completed his education at Lincoln University , a historically black college in Pennsylvania. He returned to Wilmington and developed as a leader in the business community. Together, the Manlys moved from Washington, D.C. to Philadelphia . They had two sons born in Philadelphia: Milo and Lewin. The former became an activist and fought for black property rights in Wilmington; he later became executive director of

162-647: A classical liberal arts education. She graduated at the top of her class, at age 17, in 1852. Based on her autobiography, Felton's ancestors were Virginians and Marylanders before settling in Georgia. As per family tradition, she traced her ancestry to colonial settlers who came from England during the 1600s. In October 1853, she married Dr. William Harrell Felton at her home, and she moved to live with him on his plantation just north of Cartersville, Georgia . She gave birth to five children, one daughter and four sons. Only one, Howard Erwin Felton, survived childhood. In

216-596: A colored woman. You set yourselves down as a lot of carping hypocrites in fact you cry aloud for the virtue of your women while you seek to destroy the morality of ours. Don’t ever think that your women will remain pure while you are debauching ours. You sow the seed — the harvest will come in due time." Manly's opinion piece was republished in white papers, including the Wilmington News and The News and Observer in Raleigh. It also gained national attention, in

270-565: A graduate of Fisk University and a member of the Fisk Jubilee Singers . Sadgwar was the daughter of Frederick Cutlar Sadgwar, a prominent businessman in Wilmington's African American community and his Cherokee wife; her paternal great-grandfather was a French sea captain. She had become engaged to Manly in Wilmington. N.C., and the couple were wed at the home of North Carolina Congressman George Henry White , who had moved permanently to Washington, D.C., after North Carolina passed

324-517: A lengthy feminist program that ranged from prohibition to equal pay for equal work yet never accomplished any feat because she held her role because of her husband." A major figure in American first-wave feminism , Felton was also a white supremacist and the last slave owner to serve in the Senate . She spoke vigorously in favor of lynching African Americans , under the pretense of protecting

378-647: A painter, but remained politically active; he helped found The Armstrong Association, a precursor to the National Urban League , and was a member of the African-American newspaper council. Alexander Lightfoot Manly, called "Alex", was born in 1866 in Raleigh, North Carolina . Both of his parents were of mixed ancestry: his father was a freedman who, like many African Americans, possessed African ancestry and European ancestry, while his mother

432-447: A slave owner. Felton was a white supremacist . She claimed, for instance, that the more money that Georgia spent on black people's education , the more crimes black people committed. For the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition , she "proposed a southern exhibit 'illustrating the slave period ,' with a cabin and 'real colored folks making mats, shuck collars, and baskets—a woman to spin and card cotton—and another to play banjo and show

486-600: A speech before the Agricultural Society at Tybee Island, Georgia , in which she spoke out in favor of broad use of lynching of African-American men in order to "protect" white women from the sexual attentions of Black men. Clawson published her speech in the Wilmington Messenger . Manly responded in an August 18, 1898 editorial in his Daily Record, saying that white men were hypocrites for protecting their white women while seeking to "destroy

540-489: A suffrage amendment in 1899 that created barriers to voter registration and excluded most black voters from the political system. White had announced that he would not run for a third term under such conditions, and instead built a law practice in the capital and also became a highly successful banker. In 1906 he moved to Philadelphia , where he founded a bank, and a black residential community in New Jersey. David became

594-417: A time, Manly served in his office and wrote civil rights legislation, which White was unable to get through Congress. Manly and his brother Frank moved to Washington, D.C., in 1900. Frank Manly eventually moved to Alabama, where he taught at Tuskegee University , a noted historically black college . While in the capital, Alex Manly married his fiancée Caroline Sadgwar (also referred to as Carrie Sadgwar),

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648-510: A white man and raping his victim's wife. Felton said that any "true-hearted husband or father" would have killed "the beast" and that Hose was due less sympathy than a rabid dog. Thomas W. Hardwick , the Governor of Georgia , was planning to run as a candidate in the next election to the U.S. Senate , which was due in 1924 . However, the current incumbent Senator Thomas E. Watson died unexpectedly on September 26, 1922. As Governor, Hardwick

702-477: A year when North Carolina racial tensions were already high, inflamed by the Democratic campaigns for the pending election. Democrats were promoting white supremacy and exaggerating racial fears related to miscegenation to bring out their supporters. Manly's comments about interracial relationships were controversial and unwelcome in the segregated society, although most in the white community were well aware of

756-529: Is debate about how Alex and Frank Manly left Wilmington, by November 10, the brothers had left the city. A large white mob of more than 1500 people destroyed the printing press and burned the offices of the Daily Record to the ground, and went on to massacre many of the towns black citizens in what would later be known as the Wilmington 1898 Coup d'etat and Massacre. Manly sought shelter with black U.S. Congressman George Henry White from North Carolina. For

810-440: Is not enough religion in the pulpit to organize a crusade against sin; nor justice in the court house to promptly punish crime; nor manhood enough in the nation to put a sheltering arm about innocence and virtue – if it needs lynching to protect woman's dearest possession from the ravening human beasts – then I say lynch, a thousand times a week if necessary. Newspapers reprinted a transcript of Felton's speech to garner support for

864-795: The Democratic Party . On August 18, 1898, Alex Manly 's Daily Record printed a rebuttal editorial arguing that white rape of black women was much more frequent, and contact between white women and black men was often consensual. Manly's editorial was used as a pretext for the Wilmington Insurrection of November 1898 . Manly was interviewed by the Baltimore Sun three days after the massacre, and he stated that he only had wished to defend "defamed colored men" libeled by Felton. He said that his editorial had been distorted by white newspapers. Felton's response appeared in

918-644: The Trail of Tears around the year 1838. The interview was created for Fox Movietone News . Felton continued to write and lecture until her final days, finishing her book, The Romantic Story of Georgia's Women , shortly before her death in Atlanta in 1930. Her remains were interred in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Cartersville. Miscegenation Too Many Requests If you report this error to

972-499: The 1894 and 1896 elections to "fusion" candidates supported by a Republican and Populist coalition; these voters also elected Republican Daniel L. Russell as governor in 1896. When biracial fusionist candidates were elected to Wilmington's mayor and council, a secret committee of Democrats conducted the only successful coup d'état in United States history, now known as the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 , and overturned

1026-523: The Democrats worked to regain political control of the legislature and the state. In 1897 they generated rhetoric about miscegenation to curry votes in the next election cycle. In 1898 they continued to inflame white racial fears and campaigned for white supremacy , suggesting "the Democratic citizenry [should] overthrow political domination and control of the Negro". Mrs. Rebecca Felton of Georgia gave

1080-638: The November 16 issue of the Raleigh News and Observer : "When the negro Manly attributed the crime to intimacy between negro men and white women of the South the slanderer should be made to fear a lyncher's rope rather than occupy a place in New York newspapers." In 1899, a massive crowd of white Georgians arrested, tortured, and lynched a black man, Sam Hose , who had been falsely accused of murdering

1134-817: The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. In Philadelphia , Alex Manly became a member of an African-American newspaper council. He helped found The Armstrong Association, a precursor to the National Urban League . He suffered from losing his newspaper and worked as a painter to support his family. His sons were marked by the family's losses as well, and descendants have said the family frequently talked about "what might have been" if Alex Manly had not been run out of Wilmington and lost his newspaper business. But Manly and his descendants persisted and were described as "among Philadelphia's most industrious and civic minded citizens." Lewin Manly

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1188-490: The Senate. Felton was the only woman to have served as a senator from Georgia until the appointment of Kelly Loeffler in 2020, nearly one hundred years later. Felton was born in Decatur, Georgia , on June 10, 1835. She was the daughter of Charles Latimer, a prosperous planter , merchant, and general store owner. Charles was a Maryland native who had moved to DeKalb County in the 1820s, and his wife, Eleanor Swift Latimer,

1242-580: The Southern women more praise than the man of the West—but judged by their actions Southern men have been less sincere. Honeyed phrases are pleasant to listen to, but the sensible women of our country would prefer more substantial gifts.... After she was married at age eighteen, Felton and her husband owned slaves before the American Civil War , and she was the last member of Congress to have been

1296-470: The United States. She wrote, in 1915, that women were denied fair political participation except in the States which have been franchised by the good sense and common honesty of the men of those States—after due consideration, and with the chivalric instinct that differentiates the coarse brutal male from the gentlemen of our nation. Shall the men of the South be less generous, less chivalrous? They have given

1350-497: The actual life of [the] slave—not the Uncle Tom sort. ' " She wanted to display "the ignorant contented darky—as distinguished from Harriet Beecher Stowe 's monstrosities." Felton considered "young blacks" who sought equal treatment "half-civilized gorillas", and ascribed to them a "brutal lust" for white women . While seeking suffrage for white women, she decried voting rights for black people, arguing that it led directly to

1404-548: The aftermath of the Civil War, their plantation was destroyed. Because they were now unable to rely on slave labor as a means of producing income, Dr. Felton returned to farming as a way to earn money until they had enough savings to open a school. Felton and her husband opened Felton Academy in Cartersville, where she and her husband both taught. By joining the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in 1886, Rebecca Latimer Felton

1458-570: The anti-suffragists to speak for 45 minutes but demanded Felton stop speaking after 30 minutes. Felton ignored him and spoke for an extra 15 minutes, at one point making fun of Rutherford and implicitly accusing her of hypocrisy. However, the Georgia legislative committee did not pass the suffrage bill. Georgia was later the first state to reject the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution when it

1512-417: The city government. They also ran the Manly brothers out of town, threatening their lives; a large mob destroyed the printing press and burned down the newspaper offices; out of control, it also attacked black neighborhoods, killing an estimated 30-100 people and destroying much of what freedmen had built in the city. The Manly brothers were among the 2,100 blacks who permanently moved out of Wilmington after

1566-437: The city, including the Manly brothers. The Committee gave leaders of the black community an ultimatum: the Manly brothers would have to be gone from the city by 10 A.M. on November 10, or else they would be forcefully removed. But on the night of November 9, a "pre-arranged lynching party" went to the Daily Record to find Manly. They had declared him an outlaw to be killed on sight. The brothers fled town that night. While there

1620-456: The commission of the crime because it is crime and not try to make it appear that the Negroes were the only criminals, they would find their strongest allies in the intelligent Negroes themselves; and together the whites and blacks would root the evil out of both races... Tell your men that it is no worse for a black man to be intimate with a white woman than for the white man to be intimate with

1674-404: The elections, defeating the Democrats. In 1896, Republican Daniel L. Russell was elected as governor as a Fusionist candidate, the first Republican since Reconstruction . In 1898 the fusionist legislature passed a law to expand the franchise for the first time since Reconstruction by lowering property requirements, which benefited the white majority of the state as well as black voters. But,

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1728-439: The home, with more influence on the decision-making process and proper education being provided both to wives and daughters; she further stated that women should have economic independence through this education, training, and later employment, and that women should have more influence over the children. In 1898, Felton wrote "Textile Education for Georgia Girls" as an attempt to convince Georgia legislators that education for girls

1782-612: The many relationships that white men had with black women, including some men who kept second families with their mixed-race children. Thomas Clawson , a white local businessman and editor of The Wilmington Messenger , claimed that Manly's editorial "made Wilmington seethe with uncontrollable indignation, bitterness, and rage." Critics described Manly's article as slanderous and degrading to white women. Democrats capitalized on Manly's editorial, claiming that "as long as fusion remains, Negro men would continue preying on white women". Clawson published Manly's article daily in his newspaper in

1836-516: The mayor's office and control of the city council: the mayor and two-thirds of the aldermen were white. Democrats initiated their insurrection. Democrats were determined to overthrow the city government after losing the election. A group of white supremacists , known as the Committee of Twenty-five, first decided to remove publisher Manly from Wilmington by force. They also had already identified numerous black leaders whom they wanted to expel from

1890-1032: The morality of ours." He noted that whites had long preyed sexually on black women, both during slavery and since the Civil War , as white men often held economic and political power over black women in the segregated society. He generated great controversy by referring openly to miscegenation in South Carolina society, noting flaws in the white double standard of assuming that all relationships of black men with white women were sexually coercive. He said that consensual relationships took place between white women and black men, but when these relationships attracted public attention, white people called it rape. Referring to another social fact that many whites wanted to ignore, he said that many "black" men were in fact biracial , with white fathers who themselves had liaisons with African American women. Alluding to studies by black journalist Ida B. Wells , he therefore argued that

1944-470: The newspaper and its editors were well respected in Wilmington. Wilmington then had a majority-black population. Statewide, the Republican Party had mostly black members. In 1894 and 1896, the state had three active parties: fusion candidates of the allied Republican and Populist parties (which were respectively composed of mostly black and white members) gained control of the state legislature in

1998-589: The owner and editor of the Wilmington Daily Record, the only daily African-American newspaper in the state and possibly the nation. He shared ownership with his brother Frank G. Manly. The progressive newspaper was for blacks in the Wilmington community, and it was heralded as "The Only Negro Daily in the World". The Daily Record advocated for black civil rights, better health-care, roads, and bicycle paths. Its success attracted white advertisers, and

2052-413: The progressive movement, free public education for women, and admittance into public universities. A prominent activist for women's suffrage in Georgia , Felton found many opponents in anti-suffragist Georgians such as Mildred Lewis Rutherford and Dorothy Blount Lamar . During a 1915 debate with Rutherford and other anti-suffragists before the Georgia legislative committee, the chairman allowed each of

2106-570: The rape of white women. Felton also advocated more lynchings of black men , saying that such was " elysian " compared to the possible rape of white women. On August 11, 1898, Felton gave a speech in Tybee Island, Georgia , to several hundred members of the Georgia State Agricultural Society. She urged an increase in lynchings in order to protect rural white women from being raped by black men. When there

2160-500: The riot, resulting in its becoming a majority-white city. The brothers moved briefly to Washington, D.C., helped by former Congressman George Henry White . He had moved to the city permanently after North Carolina passed legislation in 1899 to disenfranchise blacks in the state. Alex married Caroline Sadgwar at his house. Alex Manly and his wife moved to Philadelphia , where they had a family. Frank Manly moved to Alabama and taught at Tuskegee University . Alex Manly supported his family as

2214-565: The sexual purity of European-American women. Most often the African Americans whom she admonished were falsely accused of rape . The most prominent woman in the state of Georgia during the Progressive Era , she was honored near the end of her life by a symbolic one-day appointment to the Senate. Felton was sworn in on November 21, 1922, and served just 24 hours. At the age of 87, she was the oldest freshman senator to enter

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2268-404: The state legislature in the election on November 9, 1898. Much of the state was watching the outcome of elections in Wilmington, the largest city and with a majority-black population. A secret committee of white Democrats led by Alfred Waddell had already planned the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 if they lost local offices and control of the city government. In 1898 a biracial fusion ticket won

2322-402: The stereotype of the "Big Burly Black Brute" punished in lynchings was incorrect: many were "sufficiently attractive for white girls of culture and refinement to fall in love with them, as is very well-known to all.", and many were, scandalously, fathered by White men, a fact that meant interracial liaisons were also dealt by White men. "If the papers and speakers of the other race would condemn

2376-526: The suffrage movement. Congress was not expected to reconvene until after the special election, which was scheduled for November 7, so it was considered unlikely that Felton ever would be sworn in. Walter F. George defeated Hardwick by 55% to 33% in the Democratic Party primary, and was elected unopposed in the special election . Rather than take his seat immediately when the Senate reconvened on November 21, George allowed Felton to be sworn in. This

2430-465: The weeks leading up to the November 9th election and other newspapers also repeatedly published it in the two months leading up to the election. Additionally, Democrats carried copies of Manly's editorial with them to generate controversy in conversations and to strengthen their appeal. The editorial became so controversial that the struggling Republicans claimed that the Democrats, not Manly, had written it. Democrats were successful in regaining control of

2484-646: Was a free woman of color of mixed European ancestry and African ancestry. Through his father's paternal line, Manly was a descendant of Governor Charles Manly and Corinne Manly, who was enslaved by the Governor. Among his siblings were brothers Frank G. and much younger Thomas Manly. After attending local schools, Alex Manly attended Hampton University , a historically black college in Virginia. He later moved to Wilmington, where he taught Sunday school at Chestnut Street Presbyterian Church . In 1895, Manly became

2538-682: Was able to achieve stature as a speaker for equal rights for white women. Upon her entrance into the public realm, independent of her husband's political career, in the late 19th century, Felton attempted to employ middle-class men to help middle-class women achieve equal status in society. She believed that it was necessary for men to be held accountable, and, during her 1887 address at the Women's Christian Temperance Union state convention, she argued that women were actively fulfilling their duties as wives and mothers, but that men undervalued their importance. She argued that women should have more power inside of

2592-741: Was an American writer, politician, and slave owner who was the first woman to serve in the United States Senate , serving for only one day. She was a prominent member of the Georgia upper class who advocated for prison reform , women's suffrage and education reform . Her husband, William Harrell Felton , served in both the United States House of Representatives and the Georgia House of Representatives , and she helped organize his political campaigns. Historian Numan Bartley wrote that by 1915 Felton "was championing

2646-452: Was due in part to persuasion by Felton and a supportive campaign launched by the white women of Georgia. George benefited from the gesture, by presenting himself as a friend of the suffrage movement. Felton thus became the first female senator, serving until George took office one day later. Felton was interviewed on film on April 9, 1929 at her home in Georgia, discussing her political accomplishments and her memories of witnessing part of

2700-441: Was entitled to appoint a replacement for Watson until a special election could be arranged. Hardwick sought an appointee who would not be a competitor in the coming election, and to ingratiate himself with the new women voters (who had been alienated by Hardwick's opposition to the Nineteenth Amendment ). On October 3, Hardwick therefore selected Felton to serve as senator, because she was a well known and respected representative of

2754-408: Was from Morgan, Georgia . Felton was the oldest of four children; her sister, Mary Latimer , also became prominent in women's reforms in the early 20th century. When Felton was 15, her father sent her to live with close relatives in the town of Madison , where she attended a private school within a local Presbyterian church. She then went on to attend Madison Female College, from which she received

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2808-657: Was less successful than his brother. He did not finish college and worked as a waiter in Savannah, Georgia . He married but was later divorced. But his namesake son, Lewin Manly Jr., became a successful dentist. When a Commission was appointed to study what is now known as the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 , Lewin Manly Jr. was among those who favored compensation to descendants of victims for property and economic losses. Rebecca Latimer Felton Rebecca Ann Felton ( née Latimer ; June 10, 1835 – January 24, 1930)

2862-407: Was necessary. In this article, she argued that it was a man's responsibility to take care of his wife and children. Therefore, it was his responsibility to ensure his daughters' rights and opportunities were equal to his sons'. However, this strategy was not working, and, in 1900, Felton joined the women's suffrage movement . This move led her to work for women's rights, including the right to vote,

2916-515: Was proposed in 1919, and, unlike most other states in the Union, Georgia did not allow women to vote in the 1920 presidential election. Women in Georgia were not given the right to vote until 1922. Felton criticized what she saw as the hypocrisy of Southern men who boasted of superior Southern " chivalry " but opposed women's rights, and she expressed her dislike of the fact that Southern states resisted white women's suffrage longer than other regions of

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