The Seneca Falls Convention launched the women's rights movement
On this day · 19 July 1848
On July 19, 1848, a two-day gathering in a small New York chapel dared to demand that women be granted the vote.
On July 19, 1848, roughly 300 people crowded into the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York, for the first women’s rights convention in the United States. The first day was reserved for women; men were admitted on the second.
Five organizers — Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha Coffin Wright, Mary Ann McClintock, and Jane Hunt — built the agenda around a Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence. Stanton read it aloud, asserting that “all men and women are created equal” and listing grievances from property law to the ballot.
Of its resolutions, the demand for the vote was the only one not passed unanimously.
In the end 100 of the attendees signed. The convention is widely credited with igniting the organized suffrage movement, which would not secure the 19th Amendment until 1920 — more than seven decades later.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
