Seneca Falls Redux 1848-2008

The first convention to seek the right to vote for women was organized in 1848 by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Ironically it was the speech by an African American man, a freed slave, Frederick Douglass, that convinced the group of abolitionists and Quakers that it wasn't too radical to demand the right to vote for women.

After the Civil War when African American men were afforded the right to vote, leaving women behind, this first wave of feminism became marbled with racism, as is much of American history. Mott and Stanon, joined now by Susan B. Anthony, argued that if uneducated African American men had the right to vote granted by the Fifteenth Amendment, why shouldn't educated white women.

However, it was the second wave of feminism that brought together the various groups and finally secured the vote after western states advanced universal suffrage and Woodrow Wilson supported the right to vote for women.

This relationship between women and an African American man has reemerged in this election. According to Zogby's latest poll, women back Obama by a 20-point margin, 58 percent to 38 percent.

The third wave of feminism recognizes the difference between a woman and a feminist. Here is part of an intervew with Katha Pollitt, conducted by the German magazine Spiegel, about Sarah Palin:

SPIEGEL: Ms. Pollitt, there used to be a joke in the women's movement that equality would be achieved if a mediocre woman could have the same kind of career as a mediocre man. That's the case now with Sarah Palin. Are you satisfied?

Pollitt: No! Sarah Palin wasn't just picked because she is a woman, or because of her mediocrity. She is a fanatical opponent of abortion, and picking her is an attempt to get the evangelical Christian voters -- who they have been tepid about McCain -- into his camp. They might have voted for him anyway, but they might not have volunteered and donated and energized their friends and neighbors. That is different now because of Palin.

Thankfully women aren't buying Palin but are going for Obama.