I have read Kathryn Kish Sklar book, brief History with documents of “Women’s Rights Emerges within the Antislavery Movement, 1830-1870” with great interest and I have learned a lot. I share her fascination with the contours of nineteenth century women’s rights movements, and their search for meaningful lessons we can draw from the past about American political culture today. I find their categories of so compelling, that when reading them, I frequently lost focus about women's rights movements history and became absorbed in their accounts of civic life.I feel Kathryn Kish Sklar has every right to produce this documentary, after studying women’s rights movements since before college at Radcliff College, Harvard University and U. of Michigan where earned various degrees in history, and literature. After reading her book, it doesn’t seem right that a women’s right movement would not come out of the antislavery movement in the early part of this century. The United States was under a lot of stress as a country. They were still forming governments and unity amongst themselves. States were divided by slavery. As abolitionist groups started to form and slavery was being fought, women started to realize that they had no rights and began their battle. Her book includes brief documentaries of Grimke Sisters, Maria Stewart, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth; all became important symbols of the continuity between the antislavery and women’s rights movements.Beginning in the 1830s, white and black women in the North became active in trying to end slavery. These Women were inspired in many cases by the religious revivals sweeping the nation. While women in the movement at first focused their efforts upon emancipation, the intense criticsm that greeted their activities gradually pushed some of them toward an advocacy of women’s rights as well. They discovered that they first had to de...
