Women's rights movement isn't just Seneca Falls. It's filled with a diverse cast like Sojourner Truth

Over two hot days in July nearly 175 years ago, women gathered in a Seneca Falls chapel to discuss women's rights.

Abolitionists Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and several other women organized the Seneca Falls convention for July 19-20 to improve the lot of women, including in voting, divorce cases, custody of children, and property rights.

Using a similar rhetorical style as the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of Sentiments signed by many at the conference said, in part: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal."

The event, which drew more than 300 people, including men, has been noted by some scholars as the arrival of the formal women's rights movement in America and a pivotal moment in the lead-up to the 19th Amendment, granting some women access to the ballot when it was ratified in 1920. (New York passed an amendment granting women the right to vote in 1917. Still, many Black women would not be able to access the ballot until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.)

But other historians now say the formal beginning of the women's rights movement should not necessarily be pinned to the convention, arguing that there were earlier and later efforts to procure rights for women. Some point to an 1836 petition to the New York Legislature for women's rights, scholars say. 

Frederick Douglass, the distinguished social reformer born into slavery, was the only Black man to be named and recorded as attending the Seneca Falls conference. In the lead-up to the 19th Amendment, there were other luminaries of note, including Sojourner Truth and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, both abolitionists and women's rights advocates. 

"The cast of characters in the women's movement is very diverse," said Gunja SenGupta, professor of history at Brooklyn College and in the graduate center for the City University of New York. "Whether or not some Black women were physically present in 1848, in Seneca Falls, we have to write their roles into this movement."

"What is left off the story is at least as important as what is left in," she noted.

From the Seneca Falls conference through the passage of the 19th Amendment, women of various races, classes, and creeds fought for women's enfranchisement. Their histories mark not a universal experience but one in which their class, culture, or enslavement shaped their ideas on women's rights.

On Long Island and around New York City, women protested, hosted clubs, and funded women's rights or even attended the Seneca Falls convention.

"There were lots of everyday women, if you will, who got involved in suffrage groups and such on Long Island," said Natalie Naylor, professor emeritus at Hofstra University.

Here's more about the people linked to Long Island or the greater New York City area who helped shape women's rights in varied ways:

Dr. Verina Morton-Jones

An advocate of women's rights and a physician, Verina Morton-Jones' activism was interested in uplifting women and the Black community, historians said.

Born around 1860, Morton-Jones worked as a clinician in several places, including Long Island, Brooklyn, and Mississippi.

She also was a board member of the NAACP and worked to help start several organizations, including the National Urban League and the Brooklyn-based Lincoln Settlement House, according to the book "Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State."

Later in life, she moved to Hempstead, becoming widely regarded as the locality's first female Black physician.  

She also worked with other women on Long Island to form the Harriet Tubman Community Club, a settlement house, research shows.

Rosalie Gardiner Jones

Although she was raised in a wealthy anti-suffrage household on Long Island, Rosalie Gardiner Jones didn't let that stop her from championing women's rights.

Jones marched with a large group of women from New York City to Albany, historians said. Few women completed the trek, but Jones did and carried petitions to the governor's office. During this time, she earned the moniker "General" Jones, scholars say. She led another march from New York City to the nation's capital.

Sarah Jane Smith Thompson Garnet

Sarah Jane Smith Thompson Garnet was the first Black woman to serve as a New York City public school principal. But she also was among a cohort of Black women who linked women's rights with racial uplift.

In 1831, she was born to farmers who put a premium on education, the National Park Service said.  

Historians say she led organizations in the Black woman's club movement, groups where women gathered and focused on topics such as temperance and anti-lynching while raising money for scholarships and other issues. 

She created the Brooklyn-based Equal Suffrage League, which eventually became affiliated with the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, according to the book "Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State."

Alva Erskine Smith Vanderbilt Belmont

After the death of her second husband in 1908, Alva Erskine Smith Vanderbilt Belmont became more noticeably involved in women's suffrage, becoming a major financier of their causes, historians say.

Belmont started the Political Equality League, the National Park Service said. She later worked with women's rights activist Alice Paul to create the National Woman's Party, where she served as president until her death in 1933, the park service said.

On Long Island, Belmont worked to spread suffrage ideas by sending speakers to local meetings, according to the book titled, "Women in Long Island's Past: A History of Eminent Ladies and Everyday Lives."

And at her East Meadow estate, she started the short-lived Brookholt Agricultural School for Women, according to the book.

Mabel Ping-Hua Lee

At the age of 16, Mabel Ping-Hua Lee was already making her way into women's rights circles, historians say.

In 1912, she helped lead a New York City parade supporting women's suffrage on horseback.

She was born in China in the 1890s and moved to Manhattan's Chinatown in 1905. Lee wrote feminist essays for The Chinese Students' Monthly while attending Barnard College, the National Park Service said. 

She penned a 1914 essay titled "The Meaning of Woman Suffrage," in which she asserted a woman's voting rights were interconnected with a healthy democracy, according to the park service.

At the Women's Political Union's Suffrage Shop, she later gave a speech called "The Submerged Half," where she advocated for better education and civic engagement for women and girls within the Chinese community, according to the National Women's History Museum. 

But even with the passage of the 19th Amendment, many Chinese women could not vote until 1943, historians said. The Chinese Exclusion Act included a bar on Chinese immigrants becoming U.S. citizens. 

Lee died in 1966, but it's unclear if she ever voted.

By Tiffany Cusaac-Smith

tiffany.cusaac-smith@newsday.com@T_Cusaac

Education: Howard University 

Tiffany Cusaac-Smith came to Newsday in 2023 after being a race and history reporter at USA TODAY, where she wrote enterprise and spot articles examining how the past shapes the present. Previously, she worked as the race and justice reporter at the USA TODAY Network of New York, covering issues such as criminal justice reform, housing, environmental justice, health care and politics. At The Journal News/lohud.com in Westchester County, she covered Yonkers, the state's third-largest city. She also worked at The Associated Press in Atlanta.

Honors and Awards: Criminal justice reporting fellowship with the National Press Foundation;  New York News Publishers Association award for distinguished investigative reporting;  Contributed reporting for Best of Gannett honor; Member of Table Stakes, a program funded by the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund and managed by the American Press Institute to transform local news.