Social Classes of the South
What term describes white southern farmers who owned no slaves and often worked their own land?
Yeoman Farmers
Name the 1848 meeting that is commonly credited as the beginning of the organized women's rights movement.
Seneca Falls Conference
Who were the planer elite and what distinguished them economically and politically in the antebellum South?
Large plantation owners who controlled much of the wealth, political power, and social prestige.
Who were two prominent organizers of the women's rights movement?
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott
Describe the economic and social position of poor whites in the South and one reason they might support the plantation system despite not owning slaves?
They were tenant farmers, day laborers, or small landowners, they supported the system because of racial superiority, aspiration to own land and slaves.
Give one specific demand from early women's rights activists.
Suffrage, equal legal rights, property rights, education access.
Explain the role and typical living conditions of urban enslaved persons or free black laborers in Southern cities.
They worked in skilled trades or as domestic servents, or dock workers: they faced legal restrictions and discrimination while working in low paying jobs.
Explain how the women's right's movement intersected with abolition-give one area of intersection.
Women were and worked along with abolitionists.
Compare the social mobility opportunities for a small white farmer versus a poor white laborer in the antebellum South.
White farmers had chances to acquire land and improve status, poor whites faced restrictions and limited mobility and fewer resources.
Assess why many antebellum women became active in reform movements and how that activism paved the way for later feminist campaigns