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Assignment 01: Davis on Race & Class

By mentioning both Charlotte Woodward and Sojourner Truth and their contributions to the Women’s Rights movement, Davis is emphasizing how important it was for middle class white women to be able to understand the situations that other women were also in. After hearing first hand accounts of the women working in the mills and Sojourner Truth’s experiences as a slave, it forced the middle class white women to realize that working women and women slaves are still women that should have the same rights that they were advocating for. Davis is also saying that these different experiences actually benefited the women’s rights movement and without them the outcome might’ve been different. Many of the first conventions, such as the one at Seneca Falls was only initially meant to address the issues middle class white women had, such as after being married they are solely dependent on their husband and are expected to be housewives. It was only after Charlotte Woodward and others working women spoke out that many others addressed their issues as real issues. Even then, there were no black women at the Seneca Falls convention which means their rights were not included. I feel like Davis is also trying to point out the irony of what happened since the middle class women wanted equal rights as men but they, themselves, left out women who were different than them.

It was at the National Convention on Women’s Rights, where Sojourner Truth talked about her life when she was a slave, and through her speeches, proved to other women and men that were there, that black women are also women and should be included in all the things the Women’s Rights movement was fighting for. These conventions helped to get the stories of the working women, and the black women out there so their issues would also be included in this fight for women’s rights. Eventually, many women such as Angelina Grimke advocated for all women’s rights. Hearing the stories of the black women, working women, and others at the conventions brought all women together to fight for their rights instead of against each other. Without people like Charlotte Woodward and Sojourner Truth telling the middle class white women what their lives were like, they might have been fighting for their each individual rights, such as,  just solely Black Liberation instead of also Women’s Rights.