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Assignment 01

Davis used the Seneca Falls Convention as a platform to introduce the many experiences of women’s suffrage. The Seneca Falls convention is known as the starting point of the women’s rights movement. It was initially to point out the oppressing conditions of the middle class white women. For the new era of the industrial revolution, forced women to feel dependent to their husbands and suffer economically. The convention however, failed to mention women of other classes and races. And its outcome was the pouring reactions of many, like Charlotte Wood and Sojourner Truth to tell their perspective of the women’s rights movement. So although the first convention was not a total success in bringing forth all women of class and race, it did inspire others to practice their freedom of speech and have an opinion on the matter. It allowed other women to point out the things that the first convention missed. One of the most obvious thing the Seneca Falls convention ignored were the suffering of black women. Davis brings up Sojourner Truth in order to point out the flaws of the women’s rights movement. Sojourner Truth exposed the racism that was in the women’s rights movement. And that in order for the movement to make any progress, it must first acknowledge all women, including black women. Sojourner Truth, an ex-slave, knew oppression more than the white woman. Yes, white women were oppressed due to their sex, but they never experienced the oppression that a black woman has faced. Sojourner Truth then became a representative figure for the black women. I think Davis mentions Sojourner in order to explain the division line between the women’s rights movement and the abolitionist movement. And that for any real social change to happen, it must happen in unity. One cannot advocate for equality in gender, if they cannot simply even consider black women to be a woman. They were both fighting for the same freedom, yet once again the white women’s rights trumped the black women’s rights. Davis emphasizes this clear tension between the two movements.