A Courageous Call for Equal Rights

In the Wesleyan Chapel at eleven a.m. on July 19, 1848, “A Convention to discuss the Social, Civil and Religious Condition of Women” came to order as the world’s first women’s rights convention. Only women attended the first day, when, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, the conventioneers debated and amended the proposed Declaration of Sentiments. That evening, Lucretia Mott spoke publicly on emerging reform movements in the United States. On the second day, organizers presented the Declaration of Sentiments to an open audience of women and men. Its expansive view of equality enlarged the vision embodied in the Declaration of Independence, asserting that “All men and women are created equal.” On July 20, 1848, one hundred men and women signed the Declaration of Sentiments, and the decades-long, worldwide struggle for equal rights for women was on.

Seneca Falls, New York · United States