He wasn’t man enough: Black Male Studies and the ethnological targeting of black men in 19th Century Suffragist thought

One of the primary interventions that Black male studies makes is its consideration of how the objectification of Black males within ethnological sciences affected the scientific and political assumptions of suffragettes and feminism from the second half of the 19th century throughout the 20th century. Black male studies scholars have highlighted how suffragettes were heavily involved in the expansion of white patriarchal power through their deployment of ethnological tropes against Black males to justify assaulting their right to vote as well as calling for mass lynching. Within Black Studies, there is a mythology surrounding Black men’s engagement with suffrage that suggests Black men might have been sympathetic to women rights, but ultimately chose the right to vote and manhood for themselves over all womankind