At a meeting in Washington as the amendment was being debated, the veteran black abolitionist Robert Purvis (whose own state of Pennsylvania had disenfranchised its black population in 1837) declared that “much as he felt outraged by his proscription from the full rights of a citizen, he could wait for the door to be opened wide enough to admit all, his daughter as well as his son.” Purvis’s son thereupon rose to say that when he had the right to vote he would open the door to women. To which Purvis replied, “I would not trust you.”
