Our final speaker is Miss Kimberly Caines, who will speak on the intersection of women's suffrage and race.
Kim is a litigation attorney at MGM and also the co-founder of the Women's Legal Network.
Her undergraduate degree was in women's studies in Spanish, and she read law at City Law School Learning in England.
Thank you, Chan. Thank you to the Oxford University Research Centre and the Centre for Justice for this opportunity.
As I prepared for this discussion, it hit particularly close to home for me because on the 4th of February this year,
I will have the opportunity to cast my vote in my constituencies.
Byelection Constituency 13 a civic duty that I had come to take for granted every four to five years is clearly
something that did not just come to be as I gave thought to voting and contemplated it in light of this talk.
The questions to be answered for me was what impact did race have on the suffrage movement?
And in turn, what impact did the suffrage movement have on race, if any?
Following my research on this discrete point, which is limited at best,
I conclude that there is not only an influence of race on the suffrage movement, but looking at the suffrage movement from the other side of the coin.
It is safe to say that the suffrage movement impacted race in this country.
There are three key points that are elucidated from this intersection. A framework is highlighted, a fear is apparent, and future groundwork is laid.
For the avoidance of doubt, the suffrage movement is one element of the overall women's movement,
which I would submit continues today as women seek equality with our male counterparts.
During the suffrage movement, women fought for the right to vote and to be engaged in the political process nationally and parochial.
However, before I delve and unpack my three f's of frameworks and future,
it's necessary to set the contextual and chronological background of the suffrage movement.
The women's suffrage movement and its subsequent impact in Bermuda dates back to 1848,
where the first American Women's Convention in Seneca Falls issues a declaration
for women's suffrage and equal education and employment opportunities.
In the 1860s for median women were barred from vestry were in the church vestiges acts.
1867 specifically restricted the franchise to males.
This will be relevant in due course with the Supreme Court case that sought to challenge this between 1869 and the late 1800s.
Three million women signed and made their desires known for suffrage to the British Parliament.
However, approximately one hundred and twenty years ago here in Bermuda in 1890 ninety five,
the suffrage movement becomes live, where the first petition was made on behalf of four million women.
122 Bermudian women signed a petition which was presented in the House of Assembly.
Anna Maria Outerbridge, a human rights activist, asks her father, Dr Te Outerbridge, to propose the bill.
The bill is tabled and it's passed in the House but defeated in the Legislative Council.
Moving to nineteen hundred women are denied the right to vote again as the Parliament Election Act was restricted to males only in 1919.
Sir Stanley Spurling, a champion of women's rights, urges the house to set up a committee to draw a bill on women's suffrage.
Three years pass and nothing is completed in 1920.
Our American sisters get the right to vote.
However, in the background, there is a young woman by the name of Gladys MiSeq later morale moral Bermudian,
who was born in 1888 with strong ties to Somerset. She founded an organisation called the Bermuda Women's Suffrage Society in 1923.
She's charged with leading the cause for women, and her efforts were in fact recognised at last year's National Heroes celebration.
And her story can be found in the book Gladys Murrell and the Women's Suffrage Movement in Bermuda by Colin Benbow.
Miss Morel was one of the first comedians to go overseas to obtain higher education,
and arguably it was her time in the UK that gave her exposure to the suffragette movement,
which, when she returned to Bermuda, brought with her the same desire for progressive changes.
In 1925, attempts to grant women full parliamentary, municipal and parochial franchises were defeated 8:36 in half an hour.
The two bills were brought by Sir Stanley Sperling, the Women's Suffrage Act 1925, and the Jury Act for women in 1925.
In 1928, Murrell bought a test action in the Supreme Court,
wherein she challenged the then sans parish statutory judge Patterson for refusing her the right to vote.
This case was Murrell and Paterson. The then chief justice, Rowan Hamilton, concluded that quote.
He was satisfied that women never possessed the right to vote at parish meetings in Bermuda and consequently could not be nominated as vestry men.
And that no such claim has ever been made.
The defendant, Patterson, was technically successful and for the litigators in the house, he was awarded his costs, which the society paid.
In applying more pressure, Moral enlisted the help of UK suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst,
who told Bermudian she was surprised that one of America's oldest colonies was so slow to extend equal rights to women.
Arguably, that quote could be applied to other rights which are being sought were momentum seems to pick up, as in 1930,
when the women attended Paris fashion meeting and when they were disallowed the right to vote, they refused to pay their parish taxes.
Moral and the other ladies held rallies and tea parties and letter writing campaigns,
keeping in contact with overseas groups and even holding a mock funeral to demonstrate the passing of justice which had been killed by men.
So Stanley tries to advance the cause again in nineteen thirty one, and he is defeated again between 1935 and 1944.
Activity spurs the right for women MP Henry Tucker, who would become Sir Henry pilots.
The bill through the House on the 21st of April 1944, with the vote of twenty to thirteen and in the Upper House three to five,
resulting in the suffragettes securing voting rights for all women white or black,
who owned property in 1944, Mrs Henrietta Tucker was honoured as the first woman to vote in a by election and
Miss Edna Williams was the first black woman to vote in that byelection in 1948.
The first women were elected to the House. Hilda Aiken for dementia and Edna Watson for Paget.
To date, Bermuda has had three female premiers and numerous women sit in the house on its own.
The progress of women in this country sounds good, but when you marry that with the social, racial and political backdrop,
one sees the challenge that this movement highlighted the three point framework, fear and future.
The framework on a very basic level one has to remember the social context at this time segregation in countries where economic,
social and political power results and control the way in which you limit this control is
to put restrictions in place while the chronology is descriptive and informative at best.
It would be remiss not to mention and remind you that in order to vote in Bermuda, you had to own property of a certain value which,
following emancipation would have been very difficult for a large portion of this community to overcome.
As a result of this restriction, black individuals,
lower class whites and Portuguese in this country could not vote by virtue of their inability to own property of a certain value.
This evil was particularly compounded when, immediately following emancipation,
the value of land needed to vote was increased by the power vestry to the determined value of sixty pounds.
Further, if you own land in more than one parish, you got more than one vote.
So if an individual land, if an individual owned land in multiple parishes, they could return votes for all four MSPs in the parish.
This is a quote that one magistrate recounts that a man with land in all nine parishes placed his wife and all five adult children on his properties,
which meant that they each had thirty six votes in that they controlled 216 votes,
not because they did not own the property, but because it was worth less than sixty pounds.
To put it into perspective, how skewed the numbers were in 1930,
a survey by the Bermuda Women's Suffragette Society found that out of a population of 30000 in Bermuda,
where 36 represented representatives were elected, this was the elections were made possible by only 4300 people.
This was extremely unfair and disproportionate. The majority in this number arguably would not have been blacks, lower class whites or Portuguese.
The framework in place at that time also identified the mindset of those in power who sought to keep the imbalance in place.
The treatment that women endured during this fight was demeaning, wherein their identity was besmirched.
There were letters that were sent to England calling these women crazy, and one quote,
which is my paraphrase that was made to a woman during this time was Why do you want to trouble your heads with politics in such matters?
We don't want to burden you. The app's reply from the suffragette was, Well, if we deal with disgruntled men all the time,
we can definitely handle politics from the imposed restrictions of the day, clearly tried to keep race and voting as separate and distinct.
But the reality was you could only keep these variables apart for so long before their
inevitable intersection took place publicly and resulted in social and political change.
It should be noted that during the battle for the ballot, namely the period of 1923 and 1944,
there is very little reference to blacks in their apparent involvement in this process.
However, I would submit that Gladys Murrell knew that her work could not be limited to
one class of women for the concept of woman in and of itself is not homogenous.
So when it was brought to her attention that there was a lack of involvement from blacks,
general meetings were held at workman's clubs, which historically was the hub of.
The black community. And as a result,
it was said that the BW Access quote forms their own public pressure group across racial lines and quote in order to be effective as a movement,
there had to be support from many in this country. There is no clear indication that black women were on the front line.
But when women ultimately receive the vote, Miss Edna Williams, a black woman, cast hers.
While the research is limited on how involved black blacks were in the suffrage movement.
The fact the fact that a black woman voted is indicative of the knowledge that was shared in the community.
This brings me to my second point that of fear. Why was the why was there a lack of involvement by blacks in this in this movement?
While there was little or no support from black property owners quote most of whom were too busy earning
a living to have time to attend afternoon meetings in an almost totally segregated island for media,
both blacks, males and females were aware of the socio economic repercussions that could follow unpopular political acts.
But this did not deter Alice Scott from from participating. Conversely, there may have been a fear from those who had who held the power.
The white upperclassmen, as Mr. Brown writes in his book Which You Should All By Bermuda and the Struggle for Reform,
Race and Politics and Ideology 1944 to Nineteen ninety eight quote the case studies reveal
a white ruling class prepared to act boldly to defend or to advance its interests,
while at the same time barely containing its enquiry about what it believed were imminent.
Threats from below the vote for bourgeois women was resisted, at least particularly because it might provoke the enfranchisement of the black masses.
What this suggests is a ruling class whose members perceive themselves to be resting on a
fragile hegemonic order supported by a vote less disorganised and pliant working class,
an order that would collapse if workers were empowered,
conscious and organised and quote those in power knew that in order to maintain the status quo,
keeping women disenfranchised would not rock the social order of keeping blacks,
women and Portuguese out of the political process and thereby allowing them to retain power.
This brings me to my final point of the future.
It's apparent that race played a part in the suffrage movement as showing a unity across racial lines had an impact.
But arguably it was the suffrage movement that laid the groundwork for the universal movement for.
As Nancy Astor and Anglo American quoted was quoted as saying when she was in Bermuda, if a colour problem now exists, you must face it squarely.
The general consensus from blacks is noted in the May 1944 Recorder that quote,
although the coloured people in the main seemed perturbed over the granting of women's suffrage,
they had little to be thankful for under the old system.
We are told that in the future, not only will matters be no worse for us, but as a decided improvement is to be expected and quote.
A natural consequence of allowing women to vote was an impact on the future of this country.
The Bermuda women's suffrage movement set the stage for another political development.
The 20 year fight for universal suffrage,
where it was conducted that by black citizens who had wanted it and the abolition of the property qualification all along.
As history unfolded, the freeholder vote happened in 1963, where Albany unions 25 and older were eligible to vote.
The floor vote was retained. Perhaps an attempt to to continue to control.
In 1963, the same year, the first black woman, Dame Louis, was elected to parliament in 67.
The first woman is elected to a municipal corporation in sixty eight.
There is universal suffrage, plural vote is abolished and the voting age is reduced to 21.
And in 1990 89, the voting age is reduced from 21 to 18 years of age.
So in conclusion, at the outset of the movement, there is a covert interplay between race in the suffrage movement.
But in due course, the interplay became more pronounced and visibly impacted.
Bermuda. Looking at this intersection highlights the framework of the time, the fear that existed and the future.
Bermuda our present, which we have benefited from the work has not ended,
but continues to this day as the women's movement continues to advance, as we seek equality and political, social and economic spheres.
Race, class and other variables will continue to play their part in the movement.
However, these variables cannot operate in silos, as was attempted in the past.
For if the changes that needs to be made for women are to take place, I think you.