THE PIONEERS

ABIGAIL ADAMS

While Abigail Adams is not considered an influential women’s rights activists like the women who followed her, she was one of the earliest people to petition for equality for women. While her husband John Adams was in Philadelphia for the Continental Congress, she penned him a letter urging him and his fellow delegates to “Remember the Ladies” as they wrote the Declaration of Independence.(1) The future First Lady warned her husband, “If perticuliar (sic) care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebelion (sic), and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”(2) While John Adams did not heed his wife’s advice, as only “all men are created equal” according to the Declaration of Independence (3), she was right in her warning. Abigail Adams foresaw the protest and dissent among women that would turn into the Women’s Rights Movement and eventual Feminist Movements.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON

Elizabeth Cady Stanton helped assemble and organize the early push for women’s rights, that eventually grew into the Women’s Rights Movement. Stanton was born into a prominent New York family, and received an education that she first put to use in the fight for the abolition of slavery. It was through her involvement with the abolition movement that she met other key activists like Lucretia Mott. Alongside Mott, Stanton hosted the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848.(4) Stanton met Susan B. Anthony before the Civil War began, and the two further worked to improve the status of women in society. In 1869 Stanton and Anthony founded the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), where they largely focused their efforts on Women’s suffrage and political rights.(5) Stanton managed to balance her busy social activist career, with her role as a mother to her seven children. Stanton did not live to see the reality of universal suffrage, as she passed away in 1902, however she remained an active member in the suffrage movement until her death.(6) Her efforts to initiate the demand for women’s suffrage helped cause the spark that led to the mass movements that followed.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY

Susan B. Anthony was not only an influential leader in the Women’s Rights Movement, she also advocated for other reform movements, like the abolition and temperance movements as well as rights for workers.(7) Anthony’s activist nature was largely inspired by her upbringing. She was born in Massachusetts to a Quaker family, where the core Quaker belief that “everyone was equal under God” was instilled in her.(8) Anthony began her career as an activist with her involvement in the abolition movement, which she was involved with until the founding of NWSA. Around the time of the founding of the NWSA Anthony began to devote more time and effort to solely women's suffrage, as her and Stanton grew unhappy with the exclusion of women from the 14th and 15th amendments. In 1972,  Anthony was arrested for illegally voting in an election; her arrest helped put women’s suffrage on the national stage.(9) One of her most famous speeches is the “Declaration of Rights”, written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, that she delivered at a protest on the bicentennial.(10) In the speech, Anthony stated the reality that “while men of every race, clime, and condition, have been invested with the full rights of citizenship under our hospitable flag, all women still suffer the degradation of disenfranchisement.” (11) Unfortunately the disenfranchisement of women did not end for an additional 14 years after Anthony’s death in 1906. Anthony helped Stanton turn a small group of activists with shared interests into a national movement, that had lasting effects.

SOJOURNER TRUTH

Sojourner Truth ensured that all women were being fought for during the Women’s Rights Movement. Truth gave a voice to a group that had been silenced for so long, African American Women. An escaped slave herself, Truth understood the extreme hardships African Americans endured. More importantly, she recognized their inability to speak out against the discrimination they underwent. Truth fiercely worked with abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison to end the disenfranchisement of African Americans.(12) While also fighting to end slavery, Truth also looked to aid the women fighting for gender equality. In her famous “Ain’t I a Woman” speech, Truth highlights the necessity to represent black women in the Women’s Rights Movement.(13) During the Civil War, Truth continued to speak on behalf of those who had no voice, used the courts to challenge discrimination, and volunteered in Union hospitals. Her continued efforts throughout the war earned her a chance to meet President Abraham Lincoln in 1864.(14) From the end of the war until the end of her life, Truth worked closely with freed slaves as they still faced adversities like poverty, segregation, and racism.