On July 13, 1848, five women conversed over tea in a small upstate New York town. The next day, the local newspaper carried their announcement inviting women to attend “A Convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women.″ A few days later, the American woman's right movement became reality. Miriam Gurko traces the course of the movement from its origin in the Seneca Falls Convention through the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote. She examines each of the movement's founders—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and others—to show the various backgrounds from which their feminist consciousness sprang and the unique contribution that each made to the destiny of the movement. This straightforward, comprehensive history of the early years of the woman's rights movement in America is essential background reading for anyone involved with women's studies. With 34 black-and-white illustrations

Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women's Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898

No Permanent Waves boldly enters the ongoing debates over the utility of the "wave" metaphor for capturing the complex history of women's rights by offering fresh perspectives on the diverse movements that comprise U.S. feminism, past and present. Seventeen essays--both original and reprinted--address continuities, conflicts, and transformations among women's movements in the United States from the early nineteenth century through today. A respected group of contributors from diverse generations and backgrounds argue for new chronologies, more inclusive conceptualizations of feminist agendas and participants, and fuller engagements with contestations around particular issues and practices. Race, class, and sexuality are explored within histories of women's rights and feminism as well as the cultural and intellectual currents and social and political priorities that marked movements for women's advancement and liberation. These essays question whether the concept of waves surging and receding can fully capture the complexities of U.S. feminisms and suggest models for reimagining these histories from radio waves to hip-hop.

The Woman’s Bible (1895-1898) is a work of religious and political nonfiction by American women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Despite its popular success, The Woman’s Bible caused a rift in the movement between Stanton and her supporters and those who believed that to wade into religious waters would hurt the suffragist cause. Reactions from the press, political establishment, and much of the reading public were overwhelmingly negative, accusing Stanton of blasphemy and sacrilege while refusing to engage with the book’s message: to reconsider the historical reception of the Bible in order to make room for women to be afforded equality in their private and public lives. Working with a Revising Committee of 26 members of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Stanton sought to provide an updated commentary on the Bible that would highlight passages allowing for an interpretation of scripture harmonious with the cause of the women’s rights movement. Inspired by activist and Quaker Lucretia Mott’s use of Bible verses to dispel the arguments of bigots opposed to women’s rights and abolition, Stanton hoped to establish a new way of framing the history and religious representation of women that could resist similar arguments that held up the Bible as precedent for the continued oppression of women. Starting with an interpretation of the Genesis story of Adam and Eve, Stanton attempts to show where men and women are treated as equals in the Bible, eventually working through both the Old and New Testaments. In its day, The Woman’s Bible was a radically important revisioning of women’s place in scripture that Stanton and her collaborators hoped would open the door for women to obtain the rights they had long been systematically denied. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.

Feminists from 1848 to the present have rightly viewed the Seneca Falls convention as the birth of the women's rights movement in the United States and beyond. In The Road To Seneca Falls, Judith Wellman offers the first well documented, full-length account of this historic meeting in its contemporary context. The convention succeeded by uniting powerful elements of the antislavery movement, radical Quakers, and the campaign for legal reform under a common cause. Wellman shows that these three strands converged not only in Seneca Falls, but also in the life of women's rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It is this convergence, she argues, that foments one of the greatest rebellions of modern times. Rather than working heavy-handedly downward from their official "Declaration of Sentiments," Wellman works upward from richly detailed documentary evidence to construct a complex tapestry of causes that lay behind the convention, bringing the struggle to life. Her approach results in a satisfying combination of social, community, and reform history with individual and collective biographical elements. The Road to Seneca Falls challenges all of us to reflect on what it means to be an American trying to implement the belief that "all men and women are created equal," both then and now. A fascinating story in its own right, it is also a seminal piece of scholarship for anyone interested in history, politics, or gender.

A bold new collection showcasing the trailblazing individuals who fought for women’s suffrage, honoring the Nineteenth Amendment’s centennial anniversary. On August 18, 1920, women in the United States secured their right to vote with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Their fight for suffrage took decades of campaigning and marching, protesting and picketing, speeches and imprisonments. Millions of women across the country gave their all to achieve victory. From Lucretia Mott, who stoked the first flames of the suffrage movement in the 1800s, to Alice Paul, the militant twentieth-century suffragist who helped clinch ratification, Women Win the Vote! maps the road to the Nineteenth Amendment through the lives of nineteen of these fierce and courageous women who paved the way. With vivid profiles of iconic figures like Sojourner Truth and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as well as those who may be less well-known, like Mary Ann Shadd Cary and Adelina Otero-Warren, this vibrant collection celebrates the one hundredth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment and the daring individuals who upended tradition to empower future generations of women.

In a quiet town of Seneca Falls, New York, over the course of two days in July, 1848, a small group of women and men, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, held a convention that would launch the woman's rights movement and change the course of history. The implications of that remarkable convention would be felt around the world and indeed are still being felt today. In Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Woman's Rights Movement, the latest contribution to Oxford's acclaimed Pivotal Moments in American History series, Sally McMillen unpacks, for the first time, the full significance of that revolutionary convention and the enormous changes it produced. The book covers 50 years of women's activism, from 1840-1890, focusing on four extraordinary figures--Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony. McMillen tells the stories of their lives, how they came to take up the cause of women's rights, the astonishing advances they made during their lifetimes, and the lasting and transformative effects of the work they did. At the convention they asserted full equality with men, argued for greater legal rights, greater professional and education opportunities, and the right to vote--ideas considered wildly radical at the time. Indeed, looking back at the convention two years later, Anthony called it "the grandest and greatest reform of all time--and destined to be thus regarded by the future historian." In this lively and warmly written study, Sally McMillen may well be the future historian Anthony was hoping to find. A vibrant portrait of a major turning point in American women's history, and in human history, this book is essential reading for anyone wishing to fully understand the origins of the woman's rights movement.

Weaving events, quotations, personalities, and commentary into a page-turning narrative, Penny Colman's Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony vividly portrays a friendship that changed history. In the Spring of 1851 two women met on a street corner in Seneca Falls, New York—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a thirty-five year old mother of four boys, and Susan B. Anthony, a thirty-one year old, unmarried, former school teacher. Immediately drawn to each other, they formed an everlasting and legendary friendship. Together they challenged entrenched beliefs, customs, and laws that oppressed women and spearheaded the fight to gain legal rights, including the right to vote despite fierce opposition, daunting conditions, scandalous entanglements and betrayal by their friends and allies.

One of the best women's suffrage books, Remember the Ladies releases in paperback for the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment with unforgettable stories of the courageous leaders who secured women's right to vote. When the Second Continental Congress of the thirteen colonies convened to draft the Declaration of Independence, Abigail Adams admonished her husband, John Adams, to "remember the ladies" to no avail. From the birth of our nation to the crushing defeat of the first female presidential nominee for a major party, this popular history highlights women's impact on United States politics and government. Drawing on original source documents, including biographies of leaders,first-hand letters, beautiful black and white photos, historical cartoons, charts and graphs, as well as posters, ads, and buttons, Remember the Ladies presents this often-forgotten struggle-and its roots in other justice work-in an accessible, conversational, relevant manner for a wide audience. Here are the groundbreaking convention records, speeches, newspaper accounts, letters, photos, and drawings of those who fought for women's right to vote, arranged to convey the inherent historical drama. The accessible almanac style lets our compelling history speak for itself. From an award-winning author and former New York Times editor, Remember the Ladies does not extract women's suffrage from the inseparable concurrent historic endeavors for emancipation, immigration, and temperance. Instead, its robust research documents the intersectionality of women's struggle for the vote in its true context with other progressive efforts.

The work for women's suffrage started more than seventy years before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 when Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and one hundred supporters signed the Declaration of Sentiments asserting that "all men and women are created equal." This convention served as a catalyst for debates and action on both the national and state levels, and on November 6, 1917, New York State passed the referendum for women's suffrage. Its passing in New York signaled that the national passage of suffrage would soon follow. On August 18, 1920, "Votes for Women" was constitutionally granted. Votes for Women, an exhibition catalog, celebrates the pivotal role the state played in the struggle for equal rights in the nineteenth century, the campaign for New York State suffrage, and the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. It highlights the nationally significant role of state leaders in regards to women's rights and the feminist movement through the early twenty-first century and includes focused essays from historians on the various aspects of the suffrage and equal rights movements around New York, providing greater detail about local stories with statewide significance. The exhibition of the same name, on display at the New York State Museum beginning November 2017, features artifacts from the New York State Museum, Library, and Archives, as well as historical institutions and private collections across the state.