[On October
23-24, 1850, the first national
Women’s Rights Convention was held in Worcester, MA; it followed the 1848
Seneca Falls Convention but was the first to bill itself as
national, and it featured more than 900 attendees (triple the 1848
numbers). So for the convention’s anniversary, I’ll highlight and AmericanStudy
a handful of representative such attendees!]
On the benefits
and limitations of remembering a striking individual’s communal contexts.
In this
post on Sojourner Truth, I highlighted how the emphasis in our collective
memories on her 1851 “Ain’t I a
Woman?” speech (along with being likely inaccurate when it comes to her
voice, as historian
and Truth biographer Nell Irvin Painter has demonstrated at great and
convincing length) has led us to under-remember many other aspects and stages
of Truth’s long and multi-part life and activist career. But even if we focus
on that speech itself (and separate from those important questions of dialect
and representation), I would argue that the general depiction of it is a moment
of intensely individual expression, while the truth is quite the opposite:
Truth delivered the speech as part of a highly communal event, the May 29th,
1851 women’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio. Organized by one of Ohio’s
most prominent activists, Frances Dana Gage,
as the culmination of a year of efforts to get women’s suffrage onto the agenda
of the 1850-51
Ohio Constitutional Convention, the Akron convention was one of many such events
in the era that featured Truth as one of the speakers—and another was the 1850
Worcester convention, where Truth’s
speech on enslaved women led to a resolution expressing solidarity with “the
trampled women of the plantation.”
So how might it
change our narratives or collective memories of Truth to remember these
convention contexts for much of her early oratory and activism? To my mind, one
central shift wouldn’t be specifically about Truth at all, but rather a
reminder that too many of our historical
narratives emphasize individual actors at the expense of precisely such
communal contexts (far more often those individuals are privileged white men
like those in my hyperlinked piece, of course, but the principal remains the
same). Certainly that pattern holds when it comes to the two activist movements
to which Truth’s convention speeches connect—both the women’s rights movement
and the abolitionist movement are often remembered through the lens of individual
activists, often in direct relationship to their potent voices and memorable
speeches. Yet at even the most basic level, those speeches needed occasions
and settings in order to exist, and for 19th century social
movements those settings were very often collective gatherings like these
conventions. Other than Seneca Falls, few if any of those conventions occupy a
place in our collective memories, which likewise makes that 1848 event seem
more singular and unique, rather than both an illustration of a vital trend and
a launching point for even more national and influential such gatherings.
There’s another,
equally salient way to think about these questions of emphasis, however. If I
had to boil down my professional goals, in this space and everywhere else, to a
single central purpose, I would say “expanding our collective memories,”
helping us better remember the histories and stories that truly define our
national identity and community. I generally believe in an additive approach to
that goal, meaning that it’s not about replacing one memory or emphasis, but
rather making sure that less-remembered ones become part of the narrative as
well. Yet time and again, my experiences with audiences—especially those in
both classrooms and talks/lectures—make clear the power of individual figures
and their identities and stories as (at the very least) ways in to expanding
our collective memories. To that end, every chapter in my
new book We the People features such
impressive individuals, figures who certainly embody broader histories yet who
offer us the chance to remember and be inspired by such striking stories. I
know of few individual Americans more impressive and inspirational than
Sojourner Truth, and while I believe it’s important to consider the communal
contexts for her activist illustrated by conventions like Worcester’s, that in
no way means we shouldn’t remember and celebrate her individual life and
legacy.
Next 1850
attendee tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Figures or histories from the women’s rights movement you’d highlight?
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