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Class and Race in the Early Women’s Rights Campaign

I believe Davis is trying to tell us that the Seneca Falls Convention was made with the target of recognizing the electoral power for women, but instead one its primary focus was the institution of marriage which resulted in many adverse effects on woman. Also the Seneca Falls Convention focused the attention meanly in middle class white woman, letting out the situation of white working class women. They had to work long shift in very bad conditions, exposed to many diseases and other risks, as an example of this were women who worked in the textile mills in the Northeast. What was thought would be a fair movement for all female gender and the culmination of years of injustice, insecurity and even domestic abuses, became a convention that took into account a single group of women; Middle-class white women. Black women were entirely ignored in all the convention documents. No document made any reference about their participation in the abolitionist movement. Another contradictory fact that could be even ironic is the fact that in a convention in favor of women’s rights, where most of the assistants were women, women were not allowed to speak. Also, do not forget Prudence Crandall, who defied her white townspeople by accepting a Black girl in her school to create an equality in education among white and Black women, but during Seneca Falls Convention white women forgot the common desire for education that they once shared with Black women. White women wanted to be free in many legal aspects, but they were not ready to put away the prejudices and renounce racism. This makes clear that the major weakness in the Seneca Falls Convention was racism. Middle class white women did not see this convention as a fight for the gender since they only sought their own benefits. I think Davis also makes a difference when he mentions to Sojourner Truth, a black abolitionist who fought for Black women were considered into the abolitionist movement, something that Seneca Falls Convention did not do.