Suffragists: Heroes of the Civil Rights Movement

In the spring of 1776, Abigail Adams wrote a letter to her husband, John Adams. In it, she warned him to “Remember the Ladies” as America's founders considered independence from Britain.

 If her concerns went unheeded, Mrs. Adams declared, “we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.”

Of course, the founders - including John Adams - did not “remember the ladies” when they created the new country's constitution. It was up to American women, therefore, to foment a rebellion.

Who, in addition to Abigail Adams, were early pioneers of women’s rights? How did they contribute to the suffragist issue?

In this story about the women’s movement, meet Emma Hart Willard (founder of the first endowed school for girls), Paulina W. Davis (pave-runner for women in medicine), Esther Morris (first woman to hold a judicial position), Lucy Stone (first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree) and Mary Church Terrell (first president of the National Association of Colored Women).

Also meet Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, two leaders instrumental in drafting the Declaration of Sentiments and founding the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls. Visit the places where they, and other suffragists, asserted equal-rights for American females.

Step back in time to examine newspaper commentary warning against women’s rights. Uncover political cartoons with their scathing messages and fear-mongering pictures. And ... meet Harry Burn, a 24-year-old legislator from Tennessee who changed his vote on the Nineteenth Amendment, making his state the one to push ratification over the top.