top of page

Forward Out of Darkness (Historical Marker)

GPS Coordinates: 38.6821987, -77.2529503

Forward Out of Darkness (Historical Marker)

Here follows the inscription written on this trailside historical marker:

"Forward Out of Darkness," Women on the Margins of a New Nation, 1776 and Prior
“Remember the Ladies… If particular [sic] care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation,” Abigail Adams to John Adams, 1776

Introduction
These informational stations bring together an overview of women’s quest for the right to vote, known as suffrage. The word suffrage comes from the Latin word meaning to vote. A Suffragist is one who advocates or actively supports suffrage. During the long campaign, various organizations were formed at local, state, and national levels by suffragists including African Americans, Hispanics, and white women and men. Some Native American and Asian American suffragists were active in their communities. This inclusive history features the two most prominent suffrage organizations and many others. The drive for women’s vote, a major civil rights movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries represents the greatest extension of democratic rights in the history of the nation.

Women Lacked Legal Rights in the New Nation
Despite the ideals of equality stated in the new nation’s founding documents, the United States followed the precedent of English common law, in which women's sphere was the home, family, and private matters. A married woman’s identity was incorporated into her husband's identity. Married women had no separate legal identity and lacked many rights: the right to property, to their children, to their professions, to keep their own wages, and to vote.

After the US gained independence, the Constitution gave control of voting rights to the states. Most states followed the president of granting rights to vote almost exclusively to white men to own property.

Slavery and the Legacy of Slavery
Throughout US history, slavery, and it’s legacy played a critical role. Race was a central issue for women’s voting rights as most southern states feared woman suffrage would upset the power structure that maintained white supremacy

[Captions:]
Enslaved people worked cotton and all field crops in the South.

Enslaved people engaged in all types of labor such as washing clothes.

Issuing a Call for Women's Rights, 1848
"…woman is man's equal…"
From the Resolutions adopted at the Seneca Falls convention, July 1848

Abolition: A Training Ground for Women
Prior to the Civil War, both white and African American women were active in the movement to abolish slavery. This activism gave women political experience in organizing, petitioning legislatures, and speaking in public. The exclusion of visitor Elizabeth Cady Stanton and delegate Lucretia Mott from participating in the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, because they were women, led them to believe they should work for the rights of women in the United States.

The Seneca Falls Convention on Women's Rights, 1848
Recognizing that women had few legal rights, Stanton, Mott, and others organized a women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848. Attended by more than 300 women and men, the convention adopted a Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence, outlining the grievances of women. They also adopted Resolutions that called for expanding women's rights, including the right to teach and speak in public and in churches, to participate in education, ministry, trades, professions, and commerce, and the right to vote. The call for women's right to vote was their most controversial demand.

Women Leaders on the Lecture Circuit
After the Seneca Falls convention, women's rights conventions were held until just before the Civil War. Free African American women such as Sojourner Truth, Frances E.W. Harper, and Sarah Parker Raymond addressed these conventions. During this period, African American women such as Harper, and white women such as Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony, spoke publicly and appeared on the national lecture circuit advocating for women's rights.

[Captions:]
Organizer Elizabeth Cady Stanton with daughter, Harriot Blatch, who also became a suffrage leader.

Well known abolitionist Frederick Douglass participated.

The Wesleyan Chapel, where the convention was held, reconstructed in 2009 after becoming part of the Women's Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York.

Erected 2021 by Turning Point Suffragist Memorial Association. (Marker Number 1/2.)

bottom of page