WS 101 M/W- Cora Agatucci

Sojourner Truth addresses a woman’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio with her spontaneous ''Ain't I a Woman'' speech (as recorded by Frances Gage) and electrifies the audience: "The leaders of the movement trembled on seeing a tall, gaunt black woman in a gray dress and white turban, surmounted with an uncouth sunbonnet, march deliberately into the church, walk with the air of a queen up the aisle, and take her seat upon the pulpit steps." (see biography on Truth and other Black leaders in the Black History Month profiles.)

The second National Woman's Rights Convention is held in Worcester, Massachusetts.

"That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?
Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me!
And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?"
--Sojourner Truth [1797-1883], from "Ain't I a Woman?" a speech delivered in 1851 at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio. To read the full text, click here.

Sojourner Truth delivers "The Women Want Their Rights" at the Broadway Tabernacle on 6-7 September 1853.

Frederick Douglass protested against the break-up of an anti-slavery meeting in Boston's Music Hall: see text of Douglass's "A Plea for Free Speech in Boston," (according to David J. Brewer, recorded in December 4, 1860 in William Garrison's Liberator [World's Best Orations (St. Louis: Ferd. P. Kaiser, 1899), vol. 5, p. 1906.])

Under the Emancipation Oak in Hampton, Virginia, Mary Perake taught emancipated slaves.

At the last national Women’s Rights convention, New York lobbies for a liberalized divorce bill. Horace Greeley opposes the bill, which loses.

Camille Claudel (1864-1943), a French sculptor, was the sister of the poet Paul Claudel and became the student, model, and mistress of August Rodin. Her works, while close to his, nonetheless show great individuality. Their fiery relationship overshadowed Claudel’s attempts to establish an independent career. Claudel and Rodin parted company in 1898, but she continued to sculpt and achieved great renown around the turn of the century. However, the break with Rodin brought her financial troubles and affected her mental stability; in 1906 she destroyed much of her own work, and from 1913 until her death 30 years later, Claudel was confined to mental institutions.

The Fourteenth Amendment passes Congress.

Susan B. Anthony forms the Equal Rights Association, working for universal suffrage.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Parker Pillsbury publish the first edition of The Revolution, which becomes one of the most important radical periodicals of the women's movement, although it circulates for less than three years. Its motto: "Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less!"

In Vineland, New Jersey, 172 women cast ballots in a separate box during the presidential election, inspiring similar demonstrations elsewhere in following years.

The federal women's suffrage amendment is first introduced in Congress, by Senator S.C. Pomeroy of Kansas.

Frederick Douglass and others back down from woman suffrage to concentrate on fight for black male suffrage.

The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was founded by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to achieve the vote through a Congressional amendment, while also addressing other women's rights issues.

The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) is formed by Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell and other more conservative activists, with Henry Ward Beecher as president, to work exclusively for woman suffrage, focused on amending individual state constitutions.

Wyoming Territory grants women the right to vote.

The Woman's Journal debuts, edited by Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and Mary Livermore. In 1900 it is adopted as the official paper of the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

The Fifteenth Amendment is ratified. The Grimke sisters, now quite aged, and 42 other women attempt to vote in Massachusetts, but their ballots are ignored.

Utah Territory grants woman suffrage.

The Anti-Suffrage Party is founded by wives of prominent men, including many Civil War generals.

Mary Cassett (1844-1926), daughter of an affluent Pittsburgh businessman, had her first work accepted at the Paris Salon, and soon came to know Degas and the Impressionists. She continued to exhibit her paintings, which critics received very favorably, emphasizing pictural qualities of everyday life, inclining towards the domestic and the intimate rather than the social and the urban (Lady at the Teatable, 1885; Metropolitan Museum, New York), with a special emphasis on the mother and child theme in the 1890s (The Bath, 1891; Art Institute of Chicago). By the 1890s, largely as a consequence of the exhibition of Japanese prints held in Paris, Cassett’s draughtsmanship became more emphatic, her colors clearer and more boldly defined. Her print-making techniques were also among the most impressive of her generation.

Senator A.A. Sargent (California) first introduces the woman suffrage amendment, the wording of which remains unchanged until it is finally passed by Congress in 1920.

Belva Ann Lockwood (1830-1917), American lawyer, reformer, and women's rights advocate, drafted the law, passed by Congress in 1879, which admitted women to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, and become the first woman lawyer to practice before that Court. Lockwood was admitted to the bar in Washington, D.C., in 1873. She was successful in securing congressional enactment of a bill providing for the payment to female federal employees of wages equal to those paid male employees. In 1884 and in 1888 Lockwood was the candidate of the Equal Rights party for the presidency of the U.S. She was the author of the congressional enactment in 1903, granting suffrage to women in Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico. The most important case in which she participated was that brought against the United States by the Cherokee people for damages resulting from encroachments on their territory. Partly through her efforts, the Cherokee, in 1906, were awarded damages totaling $5 million. (See also First in Law: Belva Lockwood)

American Federation of Labor declares support for a woman suffrage amendment.

Wyoming is admitted to the Union, becoming the first state to give women the vote in its state constitution since New Jersey (1776-1807). Women had been granted voting rights in the Wyoming Territory since 1869. (The Western states followed Wyoming's example and influenced Eastern states: 1893 Colorado, 1896 Utah, Idaho 1910, Washington 1911, California 1912, Oregon, Arizona, Kansas in 1913; Illinois 1914; Montana and Nevada 1917; North Dakota, Nebraska, Arkansas and Rhode Island in 1918; South Dakota, Michigan, Oklahoma and Texas in 1919; Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, Tennessee and Ohio 1920, and the nation as a whole.)

The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) and the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) merge, becoming the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), and pledge to state-by-state campaigns for suffrage.

Headed by Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt, the National Woman Suffrage Association merged with the Equal Rights Association, and allied with women's clubs and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in a mass rally for voting rights.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton publishes The Woman's Bible.

Idaho adopts woman suffrage.

Emily Dickinson's Poems are published posthumously. {British Poetry 1780-1910: a Hypertext Archive of Scholarly Editions at the Electronic Text Center, Alderman Library, University of Virginia}