Timeline: WOMANS RIGHTS

1769

Philadelphia committee led by Benjamin Franklin attempts to regulate waste disposal and water pollution.

1848

First Women's Rights Convention

The first women's rights convention is held in Seneca Falls, New York. There, 68 women and 32 men sign a Declaration of Sentiments, which modeled on the Declaration of Independence, outlines grievances and sets the agenda for the women's rights movement. A set of 12 resolutions is adopted calling for equal treatment of women and men under the law and voting rights for women.

1851

Am I a woman ?

At a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio, Sojourner Truth, a former slave, delivers her now memorable speech, “Ain't I a woman?”

1854

Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden

1866

Formation of the American Equal Rights Association

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony form the American Equal Rights Association, an organization for white and black women and men dedicated to the goal of universal suffrage. They petition Congress for “universal suffrage.”

1866

The term ecology is coined in German as Oekologie by Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel

1871

The Anti-Suffrage Party

The Anti-Suffrage Party is founded. Many people, including prominent women, such as Ellen Sherman, wife of General William Tecumseh Sherman, challenged the notion of suffrage as a “natural right,” and opposed its extension to women

1872

The term acid rain is coined by Robert Angus Smith in the book Air and Rain

1876

“Declaration of Rights for Women.” Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage disrupt the official U.S. Centennial program at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, presenting a “Declaration of Rights for Women.”

Susan B. Anthony and Matilda Joslyn Gage disrupt the official U.S. Centennial program at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, presenting a “Declaration of Rights for Women.”

1877

Introduction the Woman Suffrage Amendment into Congress

California Senator A.A. Sargeant introduces the Woman Suffrage Amendment into Congress. It includes the language that would eventually become the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

1890

Formation of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

The National Women Suffrage Association and the American Women Suffrage Association merge to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. As the movement's mainstream organization, NAWSA wages state-by-state campaigns to obtain voting rights for women.

1905

The term smog is coined by Henry Antoine Des Voeux in a London meeting to express concern over air pollution

1913

Suffragists organize a parade in Washington, DC

Suffragists organize a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. Known as the Woman Suffrage Procession, it was the first public demonstration in the nation’s capital for women’s suffrage and called participants to “march in a spirit of protest against the present political organization of society, from which women are excluded.”

1915

The Transcontinental tour

Mabel Vernon and Sara Bard Field lead a transcontinental tour which gathers over 500,000 signatures on petitions to Congress in favor of women’s suffrage.

1916

US Congress created the National Park Service

1920

The 19th Amendment to the Constitution is certified as law

After Tennessee becomes the 36th state to ratify, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution is certified as law, guaranteeing that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

1962