"White men have always controlled their wives' wages. Colored men were not able to do so until they themselves became free. Then they owned both their wives and their wages"
About this Quote
Anthony isn’t offering a calm history lesson; she’s wielding an indictment. The blunt symmetry of her phrasing - “White men have always...” followed by “Colored men were not able...” - is designed to puncture sentimental narratives about freedom and family. She frames wage control as the real currency of power: not affection, not morality, but who gets to claim the product of someone else’s labor. In that light, marriage becomes less a private bond than a legal technology for extraction.
The line “until they themselves became free” is doing double work. It acknowledges the grotesque truth that enslaved Black men were denied the patriarchal privileges white men treated as ordinary, even as Black women endured exploitation from every direction. Then Anthony delivers the bitter twist: emancipation doesn’t automatically dismantle domination; it can redistribute it. “Then they owned both their wives and their wages” lands like a prosecutorial closing statement, suggesting that once Black men enter civic personhood, the model on offer is still male ownership - now extended into the home.
Context matters: post-Civil War debates over the 14th and 15th Amendments, labor rights, and women’s suffrage were fiercely entangled, and Anthony often argued that women remained politically “unfree” under coverture and economic dependency. The subtext is strategic and risky: she universalizes patriarchy by making it portable across race, but she also flirts with reducing Black freedom to an analogy for white women’s oppression. It’s sharp, effective rhetoric - and a reminder that reform movements can expose injustice while still speaking from their own blind spots.
The line “until they themselves became free” is doing double work. It acknowledges the grotesque truth that enslaved Black men were denied the patriarchal privileges white men treated as ordinary, even as Black women endured exploitation from every direction. Then Anthony delivers the bitter twist: emancipation doesn’t automatically dismantle domination; it can redistribute it. “Then they owned both their wives and their wages” lands like a prosecutorial closing statement, suggesting that once Black men enter civic personhood, the model on offer is still male ownership - now extended into the home.
Context matters: post-Civil War debates over the 14th and 15th Amendments, labor rights, and women’s suffrage were fiercely entangled, and Anthony often argued that women remained politically “unfree” under coverture and economic dependency. The subtext is strategic and risky: she universalizes patriarchy by making it portable across race, but she also flirts with reducing Black freedom to an analogy for white women’s oppression. It’s sharp, effective rhetoric - and a reminder that reform movements can expose injustice while still speaking from their own blind spots.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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