Class Set **** Do Not Write on this Handout**** Class Set
Women Speak Out for Equal Rights
Stnd 8.6.6: Examine the women’s suffrage movement (e.g., biographies, writings, and speeches of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Fuller, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony).
Many individuals contributed to the growth of the women’s movement in the first half of the 19th century. Four notable examples are Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Margaret Fuller. Below is a bibliographical sketch of each woman, along with an excerpt from her writings. What is each woman’s message?
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906)
Biographical Info: Susan B. Anthony was born in Adams, Massachusetts. As a young woman, her Quaker family encouraged her to work in the fight against slavery. She was angry, though, that she was not allowed to speak out at public meetings.
Anthony believed that women would not be able to improve society until they could vote. She dedicated her life to the cause of women’s rights. Working with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she organized the National Women’s Suffrage Association in 1869.
When Anthony tried to vote in 1872, she was arrested and fined $100. Her death in 1906 came before women achieved the right to vote. In 1979, the United States government honored her life’s work by making her the first woman to be featured on an American coin—the Susan B. Anthony silver dollar.
Primary Source:“It is said that women do not need the ballot for their protection because they are supported by men. Statistics show that there are 3,000,000 women in this nation supporting themselves. In the crowded cities of the East they are compelled [forced by circumstances] to work in shops, stores and factories for the merest pittance [small sum]. In New York alone, there are over 50,000 of these women receiving less than fifty cents a day.” Women Want Bread, Not the Ballot
(Speech delivered in many cities, 1870-1880)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Biographical Info: Born to a wealthy New York family, Elizabeth Cady Stanton had the best education a woman could get at the time. As a young woman, she married an abolitionist. At the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, Stanton and other women were forced to sit upstairs behind a screen. There she also met another delegate, and the two banded together to fight for women’s rights.
Stanton and Mott organized the first women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. Stanton also helped Susan B. Anthony found the National Woman Suffrage Association. Like Anthony, she did not live to see women vote. She died in 1902, nearly two decades before the Nineteenth Amendment (granting women the right to vote) was approved.
Primary Source:“If we consider her [woman] as a citizen, as a member of a great nation, she must have the same rights as all other members, according to the fundamental principles of our Government…. The strongest reason why we ask for women a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe, equality in social life, where she is chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty [self-rule]; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Solitude of Self (1892)
Lucretia Mott (1793-1880)
Biographical Info: Lucretia Mott was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts. As a child she attended coeducational Quaker school. In adulthood, she worked with her husband in the abolitionist movement. She refused to buy cotton cloth or sugar cane, products that were made by slave labor.
Like Stanton, Mott realized the need to work for women’s rights when she was prevented from participating in the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. She helped Stanton organize the Convention at Seneca Falls in 1848. She spent her life speaking on topics of social reform: abolition, women’s rights, temperance, and world peace. In 1866 Mott became the first president of the Equal Rights Association, a group committed to African-American and woman suffrage. She was active in such causes up to the time of her death in 1880.
Primary Source:“Thou wilt [will] have hard work to prove the intellectual equality of Woman with man-- facts are so against such assumption, in the present stage of woman’s development. We need not however admit inferiority, even tho’ we may not be able to prove equality.”
Lucretia Mott
Letter to Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1855)
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)
Biographical Info: Margaret Fuller was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She could not attend Harvard, which was at that time a school for men only. But she was well educated in classic and modern literature by her father. Fuller became one of the first professional women journalists in America. She wrote mostly about social issues, such as the treatment of women prisoners and the insane. In her most recent work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), she discussed the unequal treatment of women and offered suggestions for improvement. Fuller was only 40 when she died tragically in a shipwreck.
Primary Source:“It should be remarked that, as the principle of liberty is better understood, and more nobly interpreted, a broader protest is made in behalf of Woman. As men become aware that few men have had a fair chance, they are inclined to say that no women have had a fair chance….What Woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern [figure out], as a soul to live freely and unimpeded [not controlled], to unfold such powers as were given her when we left our common home.”
Margaret Fuller
Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)
Taken from History Alive! The U.S. Through Industrialism 2005
Women Speak Out for Equal Rights
Stnd 8.6.6: Examine the women’s suffrage movement (e.g., biographies, writings, and speeches of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Margaret Fuller, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony).
Directions: Copy this chart onto the next page of your notebook. Be sure to make your boxes bigger than they appear on this paper.
Contributors to the Women’s Movement / Biographical Information / Contributions to the Movement / Primary Source Document Name and Date / Summary of Message in Primary Source Document – write at least 2 sentences.Susan B. Anthony
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton / 1.
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Lucretia Mott / 1.
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Margaret Fuller / 1.
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Women Speak Out Poster:
Directions:
Imagine that you are a supporter of the women’s rights movement in the mid to late 1800’s and you have decided to help the leaders of the movement campaign for women’s rights.
1)Create a campaign poster that supports the women’s rights movement.
2)On your poster you need to include:
- a slogan – a catchy statement to get attention for your cause – Example: “I’m lovin’ it” (McDonalds)
- a picture or symbol to help draw attention to your slogan and/or cause
- anything else you think that would help to get more people to join the cause for women’s rights
3)Be sure to make your poster neat and colorful.
4)On the back of your poster write an expository paragraph addressing the following topic:
- During the Era of Reform, many women began to work to change and expand the way women were viewed. Of the four women we read about and discussed, who do you think was the most influential and why? Do you feel that their work had a lasting effect on American society?