Women's Rights in the United States ─ A History in Documents

Women's Rights in the United States: A History in Documents uses a diverse collection of documents--including manifestoes, letters, diaries, cartoons, broadsides, legal and court records, poems, satires, advertisements, petitions, photographs, leaflets, maps, posters, autobiographies, and newspapers--to examine major themes in the history of women's rights and women's rights movements in the U.S. The documents encompass the experiences of women from a wide range of racial, ethnic, class, economic, sexual, marital, and social groups. The book covers such topics as organized social movements; changing definitions of rights and different women's access to rights; divisions among women within women's rights movements; global contexts for women's rights activism; and the question of what it means for women and men to be "equal." Each chapter includes an introductory essay, and each document has a headnote or long caption. A picture essay illuminates how both suffragists and anti-suffragists employed cartooning to articulate their political positions.

Anne M. Boylan is Professor of History and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Delaware. She is the author ofThe Origins of Women's Activism: New York and Boston, 1797-1840 (2002) andSunday School: The Formation of An American Institution, 1790-1880 (1988).