S eventy-two years after Americans declared independence from England in 1776, American women’s status in society remained unchanged. They continued to be taxed without representation and denied access to the ballot. These were just two areas where women were politically repressed. In the social realm, common practices toward women needed change that legislation could not address such as dress reform, equal education, and norms of public conduct.

In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (pictured in this artwork) and Lucretia Mott had tea with Mary McClintock, Martha Coffin Wright (Lucretia Mott’s sister), and Jane C. Hunt in Waterloo, New York, and together decided “to do and dare anything” toward the advancement of women’s rights. They worked on a “Declaration of Sentiments,” with Stanton as the primary author. The work was modeled after the Declaration of Independence and asserted “that all men and women are created equal,” reiterating that both genders “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” In their list of facts as evidence of women’s oppression, the most controversial was the call for women’s suffrage—the right to vote—“[T]he right by which all other [rights] can be secured,” Stanton wrote.

They posted a newspaper notice in the Seneca County Courier for a “convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women on July 19th and 20th. Three hundred people attended the Wesleyan Chapel meeting in Seneca Falls, New York, to hear what the women had to say. Stanton read aloud their “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions,” which “demand[ed] the equal station [for women] to which they are entitled.” Sixty-eight women and thirty-two men signed their acceptance of the declaration, thereby challenging the legal and social structures of the day. It’s important to note that no black women attended. They campaigned for women’s suffrage in churches rather than conventions until later in the movement because of social segregation of the time.

History might forever debate what constituted the start of the American Women’s Civil Rights Movement, but like so much in life, the movement was a process not an event. The Seneca Falls Convention can certainly lay claim to being the first major public convention devoted entirely to women’s rights, although many women’s anti-slavery conventions predated Seneca Falls. No doubt these gatherings helped build women’s confidence in their own voice and social contributions, thereby building momentum to this key 1848 meeting.