COVE

The Seneca Falls Convention which took place in July of 1848 was the first women’s rights convention in the United States of America. The convention set in motion the women’s suffrage movement. It was originally known as the Woman’s Rights Convention. The Seneca Falls Convention fought for the social, civil and religious rights of women. The meeting was held from July 19 to 20, 1848 at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York. The convention was organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, two abolitionists who met at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was an early leader of the women's rights movement, writing the Declaration of Sentiments as a call to arms for female equality. Stanton was an abolitionist and leading figure of the early women's movement. Lucretia Mott was a 19th century feminist activist, abolitionist, social reformer and pacifist who helped launch the women’s rights movement. The women who organized The Seneca Falls Convention also active in the abolitionist movement, which called for an end to slavery and racial discrimination. Until well into the 1800s, women were “disenfranchised.” Their property became that of their husband when they married. Very few had a formal education. Even the wages they earned belonged to their husband and they did not have the right to vote. In comparing The Seneca Falls Convention to a work we read in class, Jane Eyre fits this comparison. In the novel, feminism plays a major role in the everyday life of women in this Victorian Time Period. Women, especially Jane, were held to a higher standard and had to fit the criteria for the “The ideal Victorian Woman” and were suppressed if they did not fit this idea of how women were meant to look and act. In the following years the right for women’s rights for freedom continued and after many years of struggling for rights, in 1920 women finally achieved the right to vote. In comparing another work to feminism, slavery, and The Seneca Falls convention, “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” by Elizabeth Browning Barrett portrays the life of women, more specifically black enslaved women, and how they were treated during the mid 1800’s. The poem depicts the lives of enslaved women during this time period regarding the problems and abuse they faced both physically and mentally. This just shows that during this time period, the English were thinking about slavery in America.

Call for Suffrage at Seneca Falls. (n.d.). Retrieved November 16, 2020, from www.crusadeforthevote.org/sene…

History.com Editors. (2017, November 10). Seneca Falls Convention. Retrieved November 16, 2020, from www.history.com/topics/womens-…

Seneca Falls and Suffrage. (n.d.). Retrieved November 16, 2020, from www.womenshistory.org/resource…...

On May 29^th, 1851, Sojourner Truth, an abolitionist and women’s rights activist, delivered her famous “Ain’t I A Woman?” speech at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

This convention was one of many that brought together a variety of activists who later helped to win the passage of the 19^th amendment. The activists at this convention were inspired by the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments created at the Seneca Falls convention of 1848. This Declaration described women’s grievances and demands for their rights to equality as U.S. citizens, and the conversation continued in Akron, Ohio. The Ohio Women’s Rights Convention is most well known for being the venue in which Sojourner’s “Ain’t I A Woman?” speech took place.

Though there are different versions of her speech, one published a month after the speech was given, by Reverend Marius Robinson, and one twelve years after the speech was given, published by Frances Gage, both touch on the intersectionality that exists between feminism and anti-racism. In Gage’s inaccurate transcript, Truth says “I think that betwixt the Negroes of the South and the women at the North all talking about rights, these white men going to be in a fix pretty soon.” In Robinson’s historically correct transcript, Truth says “But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, and he is surely between-a hawk and a buzzard.” Both versions of Sojourner Truth’s speech present the idea of white feminists and black feminists working together to simultaneously defeat the patriarchy and abolish slavery, rather than to let white feminism drown out black women’s voices.

Podell, Leslie. “Compare the Two Speeches.” The Sojourner Truth Project, www.thesojournertruthproject.com/compare-the-speeches/.

History.com Editors. “Seneca Falls Convention.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 10 Nov. 2017, www.history.com/topics/womens-rights/seneca-falls-convention.

“Ain't I A Woman?” Learning for Justice, www.learningforjustice.org/classroom-resources/texts/aint-i-a-woman.