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% Kamalpreet Kaur completed
Angela Davis talks a lot about the Convention at Seneca Falls in chapter three on “Class and Race in the Women’s Rights Campaigns.” Along with that, Angela Davis brings into account the details of the works and lives of other prominent figures during this time, and the different initiatives taken during the movement. We are taught from most of our previous history classes that the Seneca Falls convention was the first of it’s kind, and the start of the women’s suffrage movement. However, Angela Davis makes it clear in her writing that although the Seneca Falls convention was the first public meeting for the resolution, many women beforehand had raised their voices against sexism. The 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention held in London was what inspired Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for the Seneca Falls convention, as the men made it very apparent to exclude the women by the majority vote (Davis, page 51). Lucretia Mott had the experience being a female abolitionist, while Elizabeth Cady Stanton had the experience of being a white middle-class woman. At the Seneca Falls Convention, the activists were able to bring forth the idea of the women’s right to vote, with help from Frederick Douglass, and draft the Seneca Falls Declaration, which officially started the movement towards gender equality. However, the declaration was not so inclusive towards the white working class women, as well as the women of color. From the late 1820s, working women staged turnouts and protests against the double oppression they faced as being female and industrial workers, long before the Seneca Falls convention in 1848 (Davis, page 59). As early as 1837, Angelina and Sarah Grimke criticized organizations and associations for not including or involving black women in their movements. More than ten years before the Seneca Falls convention, Maria Stewart, native-born black women, addressed the issue of women’s rights and education for black women in a newspaper (Davis, page 63). Most historical of all, Sojourner Truth attended conventions after the Seneca Falls one, delivering speeches on the solidarity of black women in this movement. She talked about the fact that black women also deserve to be free from racist oppression and sexist domination, and her speeches still continue to inspire and move the audience today (Davis, page 65). Throughout this chapter, I believe that Davis was trying to tell us that although the ideas of women’s rights and equality were present amongst all women before the convention in 1848, it helped bring those ideas public and initiated the movement.
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% Fabiana Grosso completed
In Class and Race in the Early Women’s Right Campaign, Angela Davis depicts the conflict of interests and struggles within the women’s right movement. Davis starts her argument by informing us about the demands and sentiments of the white upper-class women who declared at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. In that occasion, privileged white women spoke about equal rights between the sexes, changes in the gender roles of women, and criticized the oppression of the marriage institution. These women opposed male domination in areas of education, professions, health and demanded economic freedom.
However, David shows that these affluent class women did not include in their declaration the demands and interests of working class white women and women of color. Upper-class women wanted to share their social rank with men.Their main goal was to obtain political participation and the right to vote. But women who belonged to lower social strata wanted rights as well. Emancipation, recognition, basic rights, and access to education and regulations in their workplaces were some of their grievances. The first convention was not successful because women were not unified. But it was a positive outcome to uncover that social class and race were other structural issues that overlapped within the women’s right.
On the other hand, in future conventions advocates of the women’s movement such as Charlotte Woodward, would represent a larger number of working class-white women, who were treated as domestic slaves in their private homes. They complained for their fathers and brothers and husbands who micromanaged their activities and deprived them from receiving the salaries they earned sewing. Other white-working class women would join the women’s movement to fight against exploitation as well. These women were in their majority immigrants and worked in the textile industry. Women would work double shifts in crowded factories, under terrible conditions, for minimum wages as well. These women were active in their participation and they organized in demonstations against the industrial capitalists in numerous occasions.
Another woman who had a great impact in the women’s right was Sojourner Truth, who spoke in the first National Convention on Women’s Right in Worcester Massachusetts 1850. This women of color was an ex-slave and advocate of the abolition movement. She fought for access to education for colored women, women’s suffrage and equal rights. In her speeches she demonstrated a great strength and commitment to resist those who opposed the changes proposed by the women’s movement.
Therefore, the outcomes of these conventions were to identify that the struggles in terms of class, race and gender in the north and the south had a common denominator. Political power, economic exploitation and oppression were directed towards working class, African Americans, and women. This awareness or class consciousness was the major gain of the women’s right movement. But the fight for obtaining equal rights, abolition of slavery, access to education, and economic freedom would continue in the coming decades.
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% Derek Chong completed
By including details from the lives of Charlotte Woodward and Sojourner Truth, I believe Angela Davis is trying to tell us that while the Seneca Falls convention was a good starting point, it did not completely address or resolve the issues that women of all race and class were experiencing. At the Seneca Falls convention, many working class women were still working under undesirable conditions and some, like Charlotte Woodward, wanted to get out of the house and have their labor recognized. She attended the convention for reasons different from most of the attendants: to improve her working status which was an issue many of her peers did not experience. I believe Davis included Woodward and her story because while the white women there were advocating for equality, white women working with worse working conditions were not focused on and black women were not even present or supported.
She then moves on to Sojourner Truth’s story and her famous “Ain’t I a Woman?,” speech delivered at a convention for women’s rights in Akron, Ohio. Determined to free herself and her peers from sexist and racist oppression, Truth confidently rebuts opposing arguments and leads the rest of the fainthearted women at the convention to a winning argument through the use of her own experiences which showed that while she was a woman, her experiences proved she was no weaker than a man. Although people began to oppose her, she continued to lead the argument for women’s rights against the varying viewpoints in the conventions.
All in all, I believe that Davis brought up the stories of these two women to show how middle class white women were forgetting about working class white women and black women at the Seneca Falls Convention. In order to push for equality for these two ‘classes’, their life experiences had to be brought to light in front of everyone.
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% Nusrat Islam completed
From time, women were never known as delegates or people in position of power, more often as the wives of those who were in power. Women never really had an identity of their own. Politically, socially, and economically, women were always inferior to men, especially when married. Davis’ purpose of this chapter was trying to prove to us the power of women, no matter of race or economic status. In this chapter we see two women, whom both attended the Seneca Convention, but for very different reasons. Charlotte Woodward, a White Woman, motives for signing the Seneca Falls Declarations was because of the oppression she felt being inferior to men economically. Although she was a working women from home, the men in her family felt entitled to her money because legally the men were in control of her money. However, Sojourner Truth, an ex-slave, vocally expressed her aspirations to be free not only from her racist oppression, but from her sexist domination. While Woodward focuses on the economic inequality, Truth touches more on the social issue of women seen as the “weaker sex” by explaining her ability to overcome the horrible experiences she went through, and picking herself up through every situation. She tells everyone she was able to go through that because of the strength of being a woman. Her words were so touching, it leaves everyone in shock and awe. From this we can see the difference in the oppression or black and white women (middle class). This gave us a sense of the difference in their struggles of being a women. Overall, we get the sense that Davis’ purpose was to expose the diversity of women empowerment. We can see women from different races, backgrounds, and economic status, coming together to overcome the one most significant issue they all have in common, gender inequality.
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% Katie Menzies completed
Angela Davis shares many insights about the early Women’s Rights Campaign in this chapter. She begins with the 1848 Convention at Seneca Falls because it was the first organized women’s rights convention to take place. Davis hones in on the convention’s importance and focus – the idea that marriage disables a woman’s independence (economically and mentally), and also notes the significance of the first controversial mention of women’s suffrage. However, Angela Davis goes on to talk about the problems with the Convention at Seneca Falls as well. The Convention brought up sentiments relating to only a small group of women. Not only did the Convention leave out working white women, it also left out black women — both enslaved and free.
Davis describes the work of other women within the movement to prove that the advocacy for women’s rights began much sooner than 1848 and included women from every class and race. She points out that single white women who worked in the textile mills suffered from sexism and oppression in their own ways. These women worked tireless hours in some of the most horrible working conditions and were not treated fairly. They fought for their rights with rallies and strikes years prior to the Seneca Falls Convention and yet were hardly mentioned.
Similar to working white women, black women began fighting for equal rights (especially education rights) long before the organized convention. Still, there was absolutely no mention of black women at the Convention at Seneca Falls, nor were any black women present. While Davis cannot understand this, since the very birth of the women’s rights movement came from abolitionism and anti-slavery sentiments, she admits this is not the first time black women were left out of the conversation. In fact, Davis sheds light on perhaps one of the biggest problems with the early women’s rights campaign – that the movement had “failed to promote a broad anti-racist consciousness”. Two years after the 1848 convention, Sojourner Truth prompted new ideas about equality, namely racism and sexism. She pleaded that black women deserved freedom from oppression just as much as white middle-class women.
Davis ends this chapter with the idea that the fight for equality was a triangular issue that should include women, blacks and labor in its agenda. Could there be equal women’s rights before complete abolitionism?
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% Bianca Gao completed
Davis begins Chapter Three by mentioning Lucretia Mott and how she was denied the right to participate in the World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 as anything more than a mere spectator. The anger that Mott felt was only another catalyst to inspire her to fight for women’s rights. In comparison, Davis talks about Elizabeth Cady Stanton next to display the dissimilarities between women in the United States during the women’s suffrage movement. Stanton was a housewife, having no political experience. However, Davis states that regardless of background, women from all different circumstances were able to promote change and growth within the nation.
Davis indicates that much of the reasoning for the women of the 19th century to participate in the Seneca Falls Convention was this ironic occurrence that was happening to many young women; which was ending up as a housewife even though her studies, inspirations, and attributes displayed otherwise. Davis is further reinforcing the harsh reality of the “cult of womanhood” and how accomplishments were seen as unimportant unless the woman was married and provided a family for a man. Being a mother places her in the household to take care of the family and therefore, she must be reliant on the husband for financial stability; further reducing her importance in the eyes of others.
Davis goes on to bring about the struggle of representation of certain groups within these conventions. Davis mentions Charlotte Woodward, a working woman, and questions if the resolution of the Seneca Falls Convention, asking for equality between men and woman financially, was made by the convention leaders or was it a succeeded effort by the woman working class. Similar to the World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840, the National Female Anti-Slavery Society exhibited a lack of women, especially black women. The Grimke sisters blamed the society for not representing the black women’s community enough and for not bringing forth their needs.
A woman well-known for being a leader that fought for black rights in addition to women’s rights that Davis discusses in “Women, Race, and Class” is Sojourner Truth. She was a moving public speaker that gave hope to all women. She connected to white women, working and non-working, and spoke of similar struggles, regardless of race. With the years to come, many more women began participating in meetings and conventions. They believed that the rights of African Americans and the rights of women go hand in hand and one cannot triumph without the other.
Davis, A. Y. (1981). Women, race, & class. New York: Random House.
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% Hannah Lee completed
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.
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% Jet King completed
Angela Davis begins Chapter 3, “Class and Race in the Women’s Rights Campaign”, with the events which inspired the Seneca Falls Convention. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, women who attempted to participate in the World Anti-slavery Convention of 1840, are dismissed by the men of the convention because of the fact they are women. Although most men participating refuse to allow them to join, several abolitionists refuse to participate as well in solidarity.
According to Davis, the Seneca Falls convention was organized by upper class white women, and therefore only reflected their struggles, which consisted of the controlling effects of marriage, as well as the exclusion from professional fields of work. Davis illustrates the large group of women that suffer the inequalities of womanhood, as well as being in the working class through her description of the mill women. Davis demonstrates how the Seneca Falls Convention excluded this large group of women, and how the convention itself was classist.
Davis uses the stories of Sojourner Truth as well as Charlotte Woodward to demonstrate that the heart of the women’s rights movement was in the hands of working class and black women, instead of the dignified white women who believed the struggles of womanhood to be mostly linked to marriage, and failed to see its relation to race or class. Charlotte Woodward, a glovemaker, attended the convention to fight for a fair wage, and to separate herself from the patriarchy that prevented her from becoming a professional.
This chapter furthers the notion that the credit for the Women’s Rights movement is almost always given to the white, upperclass women of the Seneca Falls Convention, rather than the hardworking textile workers and black women. This is a characteristic that I still witness today, through “white feminism”. Even today I can clearly see that white women take the face of feminism, despite the fact that women of color play a large role. The fact that the term “white feminism” exists shows the growing acknowledgment of the whitewashing of women of color’s struggles for equality and the lengths that they go to achieve their goals.
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% Amar Alzendani completed
In her “Class and Race in the Women’s Rights Campaign,” Angela Davis provides us (readers) with different accounts of what was going on during the abolitionist and women’s rights conventions that began during the 1830s. In the beginning of the chapter, Davis emphasizes the importance of the coalition between women and men in the abolitionist movement. Such union was very significant because it empowered and benefitted both groups who fought for women’s rights and anti-slavery, and ultimately strengthened their cause. Some abolitionist believed that the women’s fight was different than theirs because women would compare marriage to slavery, which makes the liberation movement seem mediocre and lose its original intent. However, I think that this union highly portrayed the seriousness and devotion that the two groups had and their ability to stand together and undermine their oppressors.
The Seneca Falls convention was very successful, however, the absence and exclusion of mill girls and African American women was a huge downfall. Many of their stories were unheard so their struggles remained eclipsed. One important figure of the Seneca Falls convention was Charlotte Woodward who worked at home. Her major concern was the decline in social and economic status of women especially after losing their jobs at home. I think that she was one of the most important figures in the convention, because unlike many of the other women, she represented most working women who belonged to a lower class. Another problem at the Seneca Falls convention was the absence of black women, and no mention of them at all, which shows another weakness of the movement at the time. It is very difficult for me to understand how such exclusion can take place at a convention that is both for women’s rights and anti-slavery. The convention’s disregard of enslaved black women is contradicting to the entire objective of the movement. On the positive side, the convention helped raise awareness and participation of more women especially black women.
At the first national convention, the efforts of Sojourner Truth, another ambitious activist, became the highlight of the convention because she represented black women and their stance on the movement. Her speeches and defense of the movement strengthened its caused and demonstrated her strong sense of leadership.
I think that Angela Davis is trying to emphasize the power of unity. As more people from various groups and backgrounds joined the movement, the movement became much more powerful and effective. In the beginning, the women’s movement joined the abolitionists and gained more support for their cause. And as time progressed, working women and black women also joined and created great momentum to the women’s rights movement. Without this solidarity, the movement would have not been as successful.
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% Ivan Chang completed
I think Davis is trying to tell us that the conventions started off as a anti slavery convention and eventually women, usually middle class, began to work together with the abolition group, African American, to fight for their rights. This is probably because at this time in the period women’s rights didn’t really exist and with the support of Frederick Douglas this allowed the women to have a chance to fight for their rights. Also during this time the South economy was based on slavery so trying to abolish slavery as well as getting rights for women allowed the women to see something that the African American saw so working together was probably a good choice. They were also treated some what unfairly at the job like being paid lower income compared to white men, etc… This was also during the time when Industrial Revolution was taking place so most of the jobs that women did was being replaced by factories and the role for women began to change. However not all women worked together (supported the abolition it was like they were only fighting for their rights as gender, but not color) with the abolition group because during some convention like the Seneca Fall Convention not many issues were being discussed, except the electoral power – rights for women to vote, until later on when more conventions were planned out in different location and different person giving the speech or representing/leading the convention. These locations and person probably played a big role for what was being decided in the next convention like what was being said and what was being represented by that person because depending on where the person is from, their environment, they will act differently from someone else that grew up elsewhere and also the people they grew up with could determine how they act (it gives them that specific identity that each individual has just like how in that school that the African American girl attended the principal made the white girls vote to determine whether the black girl should continue attending). Eventually I think Davis was telling us that these conventions was successful and made way for changes into the future. Even though the fight for rights were different (for women it was their rights to be treated equally compared to their counterparts, for African American it was also their rights along with being free from slavery – a free person) they came together to fight together for what they thought was right and made a big change.
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