Let Woman Take Her Rights: An Address Delivered in Worcester, Massachusetts, on October 24, 1850
LET WOMAN TAKE HER RIGHTS: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN
WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS, ON 24 OCTOBER 1850
New York Daily Tribune, 26 October 1850. Another text in National Anti-Slavery Standard, 31 October 1850.
Douglass attended the two-day National Women Rights Convention, held in
Worcester, Massachusetts, on 23-24 October 1850. An estimated 250 delegates
from ten states assembled at Brinley Hall, and Paulina Wright Davis of
Providence, Rhode Island, presided. Charles C. Burleigh, Lucretia Mott,
W. H. Channing, Abby K. Foster, Sojourner Truth, William Lloyd Garrison,
Lucy Stone, and Douglass were among the speakers who addressed the convention.
Lib., 1 November 1850; New York Herald, 25, 26, 28 October
1850; New York Daily Tribune, 25 October 1850; Quarles, FD, 134-36;
Harriet H. Robinson, Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement (Boston,
1881), 208-14.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS addressed the Convention in a forcible and interesting
manner, and with much eloquence. He said, this Convention has now
been in session two days, and no one has attempted to offer anything
against the sentiments and principles advanced here. It is not because there
is no opposition to this movement; but because the truths on which it is
founded are invulnerable. The arguments advanced cannot be met, except
by ridicule, and this will be the great weapon that will be used against us.
He said he had some experience of the character of public opinion. He had
been its victim, and the lesson he had learned was to take his rights
wherever he could get them—to assume them, at any rate, as properly his.
This principle of action had brought him into some difficulties: he had been
turned out of railroad cars in Massachusetts, and out of steamboat cabins,
and knocked on the head. But he found the continual exercise of his rights
was wearing out their prejudice against color. He closed by urging strongly
that women should take their rights. Seize hold of those which are most
strongly contested. You have already free access to the paths of literature;
Women may write books of poetry, travels, &c. and they will be read with
avidity. Let them strike out in some other path where they are not now
allowed to go. If there is some kind of business from which they are
excluded, let some heroic Woman enter upon that business, as some of
these noble Women have entered upon the practice of medicine. Let
Woman take her rights, and then she shall be free.