WMS 50 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: American Equal Rights Association, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Seneca Falls Convention
Oct 11 WMS 050 Women’s Rights in the US (pp68-143) Lecture Notes
➢ 13th amendment 1865 - No slavery
➢ 14th amendment 1868 - vote denied to any of the male inhabitants in such states, prevent control of life,
equal protection under law.
➢ 15th amendment 1870 – The right of citizens shall not be restricted by race
➢ Moment of recognition
o Coming to see that what one thought was one’s own individual problem exists in a larger context, is
shared by others, and is a consequence of relationships of power and inequality
➢ Moment of politics and strategizing
o Figuring out how to address those inequalities and change the relationships of power
o We can talk about a movement once people come together as a group with a shared set of goals,
engaging in action together over a period of time
➢ Angelina Grimke on the influence of the abolitionist movement
o The lesson:
✓ To critique the status quo
✓ To see women as a group with common interests
✓ Got training in political organizing
✓ Learn to think strategically
✓ Learned civil disobedience
✓ Learned value of intergenerational transmission of experience, analysis
✓ Saw hoe politicized identities were sustained through communities (power of social
networks…)
✓ Learned the value and difficulties of coalitional activism
➢ Tactics in the campaign for women’s suffrage and equality
o Revolutionary rhetoric
✓ Seneca Falls Convention of 1848
✓ Declaration of Sentiments modeled directly on the Declaration of independence.
✓ Online Reading: Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions
o Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions – “he has made her” “taken from her all right in
property”
o Divisions
✓ Refer to Address from the first annual meeting of the American Equal Rights Association
delivered by Sojourner Truth on May 9, 1867, address to the National Woman Suffrage
Convention delivered by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1869.
➢ “True womanhood” and the ideology of separate spares
o Dominant especially from the 1820s through the late 19th century
o Separate spheres for men and women
✓ Women as “keepers of the home” and as morally superior to men
✓ Public, corrupt world a place for men
o True womanhood was a relational category
✓ Applied to middle classes, native-born white women
✓ Defined against middle-class, native-born, white men, characterized by their reasoning
capacities, their engagement in paid work, and their circulation in the world of public affairs
✓ Defined against poor women and women of color, who often had to work and who were often
seen by the middle classes as unclean, immoral, inferior mothers, lascivious, and lacking in
home-making.
o The use of domestic images and rhetoric
✓ Politics govern even the purity of the milk supply. It is not outside the home but inside the
baby.
o Women’s Christian Temperance Union (founded in 1874)
✓ Led by Frances Willard from 1879-1898
✓ Set up day-care centers, Sunday schools, vocational training schools, homeless shelters, free
medical clinics, and affordable housing.
✓ Purity platform: worked to stop prostitution, human trafficking and the spread of venereal
disease, alcohol and tobacco consumption
Document Summary
Oct 11 wms 050 women"s rights in the us (pp68-143) lecture notes. 14th amendment 1868 - vote denied to any of the male inhabitants in such states, prevent control of life, equal protection under law. 15th amendment 1870 the right of citizens shall not be restricted by race. Coming to see that what one thought was one"s own individual problem exists in a larger context, is shared by others, and is a consequence of relationships of power and inequality. Angelina grimke on the influence of the abolitionist movement. To see women as a group with common interests. Learned value of intergenerational transmission of experience, analysis. Saw hoe politicized identities were sustained through communities (power of social networks ) Learned the value and difficulties of coalitional activism. Tactics in the campaign for women"s suffrage and equality. Declaration of sentiments modeled directly on the declaration of independence.
