Final answer:
The American Equal Rights Association split due to disagreements about prioritizing suffrage for African American men over a universal suffrage that included women, against the backdrop of debate over the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. This led to the formation of the National Woman Suffrage Association, emphasizing national women's suffrage, and the American Woman Suffrage Association, with a conservative state-by-state approach.
Step-by-step explanation:
Causes of the Split in the American Equal Rights Association
The American Equal Rights Association (AERA) was formed with the goal of securing equal rights for all, but it faced internal disagreements leading to its split. The primary cause of the split was the conflicting opinions over whether suffrage for African American men should be prioritized over a universal suffrage approach that included women. This debate became particularly intense during discussions about the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
Some members of the AERA, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, opposed the Fourteenth Amendment for introducing the term 'male' into the Constitution and the Fifteenth Amendment for failing to remove 'sex' as an unlawful barrier to suffrage.
The disagreement over the approach to suffrage — whether to support the Fifteenth Amendment which focused on race but not sex, or to hold out for a broader universal suffrage — led to the establishment of two separate associations.
Stanton and Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) that worked for women's suffrage at the national level, while the group who supported the Fifteenth Amendment founded the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), which pursued a more conservative state-by-state approach. These competing strategies and ideologies about suffrage rights for women and African American men ultimately resulted in the division of the AERA.
The complexity of the situation was further exacerbated by issues of race and class. Prominent African American suffragists like Frances Harper and Ida B. Wells-Barnett pointed out the challenges posed by racial, economic, and gender inequalities, while some white suffragists prioritized winning the support of white men in the South by sidelining the interests of African American women. The racial dynamics within the suffrage movement reflected the larger societal prejudices of the time and contributed to the fracturing of the movement.