Differently Radical

Abstract

This chapter compares two 1915 issues of The Crisis and The Masses that focused on women’s suffrage as a way of identifying similarities, differences, and cross-periodical dialogues between black and white justice-seeking communities, both of which deemed advocating women’s suffrage important to their projects and audiences. The Crisis and The Masses spoke to gender-integrated audiences, included women as editors and contributors, and created public spaces for protest, outrage, and affirmation that countered dominant culture beliefs. Focusing on their words, images, argumentation, and advertisements, this study situates these two special issues in the contexts of debates about women’s suffrage, women’s rights, and feminism, as well as within the fraught conflicts between the nineteenth-century abolitionist and Black freedom movements and the women’s rights movement. Comparing the contents of both issues makes clear that considering race in gendered radicalism and gender in race radicalism are essential when examining suffrage media rhetoric.