174 years ago on this very day, about 300 people met for two hot days and candlelit evenings in the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York setting the stage for the women’s suffrage movement… in the first formal women’s rights convention ever held in the United States, 68 women supported by 32 men who signed a separate list “in favor of the movement” declared:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

although the convention became best known for its demand for women’s right to vote, the Declaration of Sentiments covered a wide agenda and as the first women’s rights convention, Seneca Falls initiated the organized women’s rights movement in the United States…

the pioneers of women’s rights—drawn from Quaker, Congregationalist, and Methodist backgrounds—provided support for the emerging formal women’s rights movement in the 1840s… it was the hurriedly organized Seneca Falls convention, the brainchild of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, that brought national attention to the issue of women’s rights… touching off a major national debate, newspapers across the country picked up the story with press reaction to the convention varying widely… one editor thought it was “a most insane and ludicrous farce” while the Lowell Courier feared women’s equality because “the lords must wash the dishes, scour up, be put to the tub, handle the broom, darn stockings…” some editors, however, praised the meeting with the St. Louis Daily Reveille declaring that “the flag of independence has been hoisted for the second time on this side of the Atlantic…”

in a speech in 1888 before the International Council of Women in Washington, D.C., Frederick Douglass recalls the women at the Seneca Falls convention where he was one of the very few men who attended:

“The women who have thus far carried on this agitation have already embodied and illustrated Theodore Parker’s three grades of human greatness. The first is greatness in executive and administrative ability; second, greatness in the ability to organize; and, thirdly, in the ability to discover truth. Wherever these three elements of power are combined in any movement, there is a reasonable ground to believe in its final success; and these elements of power have been manifest in the women who have had the movement in hand from the beginning. They are seen in the order which has characterized the proceedings of this Council. They are seen in the depth and are seen in the fervid eloquence and downright earnestness with which women advocate their cause. They are seen in the profound attention with which woman is heard in her own behalf. They are seen in the steady growth and onward march of the movement, and they will be seen in the final triumph of woman’s cause, not only in this country, but throughout the world.”

finally, the organizers of the convention were profoundly influenced and inspired by the very powerful women of the Haudenosaunee who to this day have a very powerful role in the running of and leadership in their communities; in large part we owe a great gratitude to these women who taught us and showed us the way…