Essay On Women's Suffrage Movement

Between the mid 1800s and the early 1900s, there were always instances of dissent happening all at the same time in the United States. In 1861, the Civil War erupted across the nation. Slavery was still happening and was not officially abolished until 1865 and even after that, blacks still faced discrimination and segregation for many years afterwards. In 1914, World War I started which dragged many countries including the U.S. into fighting. Even though all of these are great examples of dissent during this era, the one that is equally important and needs to be spotlighted more is the U.S. Women’s Suffrage Movement.
The U.S. Women’s Suffrage Movement is one of the most influential and relevant dissent movements in American history. A fight that lasted for 72 years and ended in the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which provided …show more content…
The groups behind it all were the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and National Woman’s Party (NWP). Within these groups were some of the most important women to the movement such as Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Alice Paul. The suffrage movement actually started in 1848 with the Seneca Falls Convention. At the Convention, the Declaration of Sentiments was adopted. Written with U.S. Declaration of Independence in mind, it declared that “all men and women are created equal,”. Among other things it also listed other rights that women were deprived of, such as the right to vote (Vile). In total, 100 people signed the declaration, sixty-eight being women and thirty-two being men (“Signatories to the Declaration of Sentiments”). In the beginning there was a debate about how to go about the women’s suffrage movement. Disputes and conflicting ideas led to two groups being formed. The radical one, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and the more moderate one, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), founded by Lucy