If our Song of the Day, “You Don’t Own Me,” had existed in 1848, it would have been the perfect rallying cry for the women attending the first women’s convention held in the U.S.
It was during that convention on July 19, that the Declaration of Sentiments and Grievances was adopted.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one of the organizers of the event, wrote the declaration, using the Declaration of Independence as a roadmap. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal: that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."
The nearly 200 women in attendance and the 40 men who were allowed to attend on the second day, adopted the declaration and 12 resolutions.
Eleven of the resolutions were approved unanimously. The resolution demanding the right to vote for women passed only after a long debate.
The right to vote was so controversial, some people quit the movement in protest.
Women wouldn’t win the right to vote until the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920.
The idea for the convention germinated after Stanton and Lucretia Mott attended an anti-slave convention in London, England where they were forced to sit in a section only for women and couldn’t speak.
The Seneca Falls Convention might have been about women’s rights, but it excluded poor women, black women and other minorities.
Our Song of the Day, “You Don’t Own Me,” was a song of grievances. The singer tells her boyfriend not to tell her how to act or what to do.
It became the earliest feminist anthem.
Leslie Gore, then 17, turned it into a hit in 1964 when it reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100. The irony, the two people who wrote it, were men.
Song of the Day is created by Sheldon Zoldan, and produced by Pam James for WGCU. To receive the Song of the Day in your inbox every day, email shzoldan@comcast.net with the subject line ADD ME TO SOTD.
