Black Women Abolition and Women’s Rights

From Abolition to Women’s Rights

• Many women who were involved in abolition began to turn attention to their own needs as women.
• The work that women did for abolition helped them gain experience in organizing, networking, lecturing, and fundraising.
  • These were skills that they used to push the Women’s Rights Movement forward.
• White women have been historically centered in this movement, but Black women were involved in working for abolition and women’s rights.
• They will demand many things including
  • property rights, equal protection under the law, equal education, and in time they will demand the vote

Harriet Tubman, 1822- 1913

• Abolitionist, women’s rights advocate, and suffragist
• Escaped slavery then helped enslaved people to escape
• Helped enslaved people escape through the Underground Railroad
  • Helped over 300 slaves escape to freedom
  • Worked for women’s suffrage

Underground Railroad

• Was neither a railroad nor underground
• A series of safe houses and routes created to assist runaway slaves
• Local groups helped fugitive slaves escape to freedom

Sojourner Truth, 1797-1883

• Abolitionists, suffragists
• Lived as a slave in NY
• Escaped from slavery in 1826
• Traveled and gave speeches on the condition of slaves and the lack of rights for women

Sarah Mapps Douglass, 1808 – 1882

• Abolitionist (from an abolitionist family)
  • Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society  ‘
  • Grimke sisters worked with her and were friends
  • Archives have letters between the friends
• Teacher
  • Promoted education for girls as well as boys
  • Taught science and math (to girls too)
• Female Literacy Association
  • Co-founder
  • Secretary for the association

Maria W. Stewart, 1803-1879

• Abolitionist
• Taught herself to read and write
• Massachusetts General Colored Association
• Her work was published in The Liberator
• Became a public speaker
  • Spoke in front of women and men
• Was not in favor of Black Americans leaving for Africa
  • American Colonization Society

Lucretia Mott, 1793-1880

• Quaker
• Leading abolitionist in Philadelphia
• Helped establish the American Anti-Slavery Society
•  Also helped to create the Female Anti-Slavery Society

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815 – 1902

• Abolitionist and suffragist
• Believed religion was leading cause of women’s oppression
  • Published The Woman’s Bible
  • Reinterpreted scripture to show that women were not meant to be submissive to men
• Wrote “The Declaration of Sentiments” with a few other women at the Seneca Falls Convention
• Married an abolitionist and had seven children

Seneca Falls Convention, 1848

• First convention of its kind in the U.S. (focused on women’s rights)
  • 200 women attended
  • Organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton
  • Historians have used this as the beginning of the women’s suffrage movement

Women’s Suffrage Begins, 1848

• Declaration of Sentiments”
  • Written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and co-authors
  • Written at the Seneca Falls Convention
  • Detailed the injustices endured by women in the U.S.
  • Included the demand for the right to vote
• Suffrage: the right to vote in political elections

The Declaration of Sentiments

• Example of some of the demands:
• He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.
• He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice.
• He has withheld from her rights which are given to the most ignorant and degraded men—both natives and foreigners.
• Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides.
• He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead.
• He has taken from her all right in property, even to the wages she earns.

Suffrage Movement

• Began in 1848
  • Women gain the vote 72 years later
  • 19th Amendment – 1920
• Black women and men are prohibited from voting by local and state practices. Violence and racism.
• The Voting Rights Act of 1965 will help black men and women exercise their right to vote.

Susan B. Anthony , 1820-1906

• Abolitionist and suffragist
• A leader in promoting women’s rights in general
• Born into a Quaker family
• Never married
• “Failure is Impossible”

Together

• Met in 1851 at a convention
• (Susan B. Anthony was not at the Seneca Falls Convention)
• Revolution – weekly newspaper
• Established the: Women’s New York State Temperance Society
• Formed the: National Woman Suffrage Association in 1869
• Focused on the Vote after the Civil War
• Most of their work was in educating people about the importance of women gaining more rights as equal beings.

Stanton and Anthony

• Worked to expand New York’s Women’s Property Law of 1848.
• New York’s Property Law of 1860:
• Married women gained new rights:
  
  • Right to own property
  • Engage in business
  • Manage their finances
  • To sue and be sued
  • Joint custody of their children