Akron Woman's Rights Convention

Date May 28-29, 1851

This second major women’s rights convention highlighted the connections between the women’s and abolitionist movements and exposed the internal contradictions that would increasingly emerge in the growing women’s movement.

Also known as Second National Woman’s Rights Convention; Second Statewide Convention

Locale Akron, Ohio

Key Figures

• Frances Dana Gage (1808-1884), writer and lecturer who presided over the convention
• Betsey Mix Cowles (1810-1876), teacher, school founder, and reformer
• Sojourner Truth (c. 1797-1883), evangelist who spoke on abolition and women’s rights

Summary of Event

By the late 1840’s, the accelerated growth of the United States affected all aspects of American life. Territorial expansion to the West and industrial development changed the social fabric as immigrant labor created urban areas and modified gender and class roles. The women’s rights movement emerged from this dynamic context. Most of the movement’s founders had gained experience in organizing from their participation in the temperance, antislavery, moral purity, and health reform movements through their churches and benevolent societies. On July 19, 1848, they came from the surrounding areas to assemble in a Wesleyan chapel in Seneca Falls, New York, to begin the organized women’s rights movement. By the end of that first meeting, sixty-eight women and thirty-two men had signed the Declaration of Sentiments, a compilation of gender inequities ending with a series of resolutions to shape the agenda for the coming years.

The movement had able leaders in Susan B. Anthony , a pragmatic, yet intense organizer; theorist Elizabeth Cady Stanton , who had limited mobility because of her large family; Quaker reformer Lucretia Mott ; orators Lucy Stone and Ernestine Rose ; and many others. Male reformers also participated during these early years. However, when men joined the women at their next meeting in the Quaker community of Salem, Ohio, the women barred them from vocal participation to raise their awareness of women’s plight and won a resolution to secure equal rights for all persons.

The first National Woman’s Rights Convention was organized by wealthy reformer Paulina Wright Davis and held on October 26 and 27, 1850, in Worcester, Massachusetts. New leaders attending this meeting included Antoinette Brown, who became the first ordained female minister; Harriot Hunt, a medical pioneer; and Sojourner Truth , an evangelist and abolitionist.

The connection between women’s rights and abolitionism was strong during these early years. Arguments against the moral, legal, and social conditions of slavery raised women’s awareness of their own restrictions. Societies, newspapers, lyceums, lecture circuits, fairs, and support networks began to include other reforms, including women’s right to speak in public on behalf of slaves. Gradually, women broke down barriers and developed skills that would help them develop their own movement for women’s rights.

These connections appeared at what is generally called the Second National Woman’s Rights Convention, on May 28-29, 1851, at Akron, Ohio. Because of the loose organization through steering committees during the early years of the women’s movement, confusion about titles of conventions abounds. Akron’s meeting is also known as both the Second Statewide Convention and as the Akron Convention. However, the Worcester, Massachusetts, Convention of October, 1851, is also sometimes called the Second National Woman’s Rights Convention.

Ohio had the most antislavery societies of any state in the union in 1840. It had recently adopted a new constitution, which had mobilized both antislavery and women’s rights supporters working to shape the new laws. Although the Ohio constitution remained unchanged regarding women’s rights, agitation for women’s rights continued throughout the state.

Akron was a central location in Ohio, drawing leaders from the East and from various pockets of reform in Ohio. The strongest center of support came from Salem, Ohio, the Quaker community in Columbiana County that was the home of the Anti-Slavery Bugle, the newspaper of the Garrisonian Western Anti-Slavery Society. Salem was also the home of many male and female supporters of women’s rights and equality. These included Jane Elisabeth (Lizzie) Hitchcock and her husband Benjamin Jones, who were co-editors of the Anti-Slavery Bugle; Mary Ann and Oliver Johnson, who succeeded Lizzie and Ben Jones as the paper’s editors; Emily Robinson; and Lot and Eliza Holmes. The abolitionist and temperance supporter Martha J. Tilden, who was the wife of a congressman, represented Akron. Teacher and school founder Betsey Mix Cowles came from Austinburg, representing Canton. Josephine Sophia White Griffing came from Medina as one of the Western Anti-Slavery Society’s most active and effective lecturers. From the southern part of the state came Sarah Ernst, a Cincinnati Garrisonian.

The Akron Woman’s Rights Convention tapped Ohio leadership. Frances Dana Gage of McConnelsville, Ohio, a married woman with four young children, was elected president of this convention. Gage’s skills as a writer for abolition and temperance had brought her into the reform network that supported women’s rights. Although she admitted to having never attended a regular business meeting and to feeling entirely inexperienced in organizational procedures, her natural organizational and intellectual skills provided the basis for her leadership. Unlike the other Ohio reformers, who had come from New England to settle in the West, Gage was born in Ohio and had married an Ohioan. In her opening speech to the convention, she related how women had struggled alongside men in adapting to the environment. These experiences demonstrated the common needs of women and their shared humanity with men. She traced the false basis in religion and custom that gave men predominance over women. She sought with “a loving spirit” to bring men into the movement for women’s rights to create “a revolution without armies, without bloodshed” to improve the conditions of society by granting women their rights.

Ohio leaders read letters of support from Paulina W. Davis of Rhode Island, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Amelia Bloomer of New York, former Oberlin student Lucy Stone, and Gerrit Smith . The current status of women was presented in reports. L. Maria Giddings spoke on the common law. Betsey Mix Cowles detailed labor conditions and wages. Pittsburgh’s Jane G. Swisshelm related women’s sphere to education, a topic also addressed by Emily Robinson.

The reports provided a stage for commentaries and debate, with ministers quoting Scripture assigning women a secondary role. They pointed out that, according to the Bible, Jesus had chosen no female apostles, that Eve was responsible for all the sin in the world, and that John had instructed women to be silent. As the meeting degenerated in this debate, a tall figure emerged from the back of the church hall and asked to speak. Many in the crowd responded in the negative, saying that women’s rights and “nigger’s rights” did not mix. Gage, however, had been a strong supporter of the antislavery movement and had great respect for the proposed speaker, Sojourner Truth. Gage assented to the request.

The speech then delivered by Sojourner Truth turned the tide in favor of women’s rights. This former New York slave, originally named Isabella Van Wegener, had experienced a religious conversion and had renamed herself Sojourner Truth as she entered a career as an itinerant preacher and antislavery lecturer. Dubbed the “Lybian Sybil” by Lydia Maria Child , Truth stood more than six feet tall and had very dark skin, which gave her a commanding physical presence in any gathering. Although illiterate, she was an eloquent orator and had addressed similar crowds in the antislavery lecture circuit and spoken to earlier women’s rights conventions at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1850.

Truth’s speech at the Akron Convention was called “Ain’t I a Woman?” by Gage and by the Anti-Slavery Bugle . Truth argued that she had worked as hard as a man, had physical needs similar to those of a man, and thus deserved the same rights in return. She asked the ministry about the origin of Christ—from God and a woman, with man having no part. When challenged on the matter of Christ’s having no female apostles, she countered with women’s roles attending Christ at the crucifixion and mentioned the women to whom he appeared after resurrection. In defense of Eve, she argued that if one woman could turn the world upside down, then women together could correct the world’s problems, if given rights. Accounts of the magical influence of her speech were in agreement that she had provoked respect and admiration and turned the event into a successful women’s rights convention.

Significance

The convention resolved to use the periodical press to shape public sentiments, to use teachers and mothers to shape young minds, to form labor partnerships, and to repeal laws that created different privileges. Caroline Severance reported on the event in the Cleveland newspapers; in May, 1853, she presided over the first annual meeting of the Ohio Woman’s Rights Association, which had been founded May 27, 1852, in Ravenna. The Akron Convention reflected the internal contradictions that would increasingly emerge in the growing women’s rights movement.

Bibliography

Bernhard, Virginia, and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, eds. The Birth of American Feminism: The Seneca Falls Woman’s Convention of 1848. St. James, N.Y.: Brandywine Press, 1995. Focuses on the founding convention; also provides information on the meetings that followed.

Buhle, Mari Jo, and Paul Buhle, eds. The Concise History of Woman Suffrage: Selections from the Classic Work of Stanton, Anthony, Gage, and Harper. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978. Collection of primary documents on the women’s movement that includes several relevant to the Akron convention.

Fitch, Suzanne Pullon, and Roseann M. Mandziuk. Sojourner Truth as Orator: Wit, Story, and Song. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997. Exploration of Sojourner Truth’s exceptional oratorical skills that includes some of Truth’s speeches, songs, and public letters.

Flexner, Eleanor. Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States. New York: Atheneum, 1973. Still one of the best analyses of the movement for women’s rights.

Gilbert, Olive. Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Edited by Margaret Washington. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. In the introduction to this edition of the Narrative of Sojourner Truth, the editor explores the Dutch culture in relation to slavery, the elements of culture and community in interpreting the effects of slavery upon African Americans, and the issue of gender in relation to the authorship of the narrative.

Langley, Winston E., and Vivian C. Fox, eds. Women’s Rights in the United States: A Documentary History. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994. Provides primary documents and bibliographic information.

Mabee, Carleton. Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend. New York: New York University Press, 1993. Provides information about Truth’s background and her role in the women’s movement.

Painter, Nell Irvin. Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996. Comprehensive biography that challenges the authenticity of historical sources regarding Truth’s life.

Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds. History of Woman Suffrage. 6 vols. New York: Fowler & Wells, 1881-1922. Reprint. New York: Arno Press, 1969. Volume 1 provides some information from Gage’s reminiscences on the Akron convention.