by: Dorthea Dix
Some people just do not have the decency to understand that everyone has feelings and to accept those that are different. Instead they become afraid of the mentally disabled and send them away to prison to be tortured.
In my years as a Sunday school teacher in the women's section of the jail, I stumbled across where they kept the people who were mentally disabled and considered dangerous. When I saw the way these type people were being treated, I had to do something about it. In my two years of investigating I saw them kept in cages, closets, cellars, stables, and pens. I could not believe the way the cell keepers would beat them because the poor things could not understand what they were suppose to do. I saw the fear in the eyes of the individuals as they were chained to the walls without any clothes on, beaten to the pulp. Even as I shared my story about what I saw with people, they still were unwilling to help because they were scared of these people. Somehow they had gotten it into their heads that these poor, helpless people were dangerous. The only crime they ever committed was being born different. How can they be blamed for that?
After many attempts I was finally able to persuade Massachusetts's legislature to expand the mental hospitals. Then the people will at least have a bed and clean place to stay. I worked to ensure that these people also were treated with the kindness and compassion they deserved.
-Dorothea Dix-

by: Sojourner Truth
Even great reformers like Dorothea Dix were not given the right to speak in front of the legislature because she was a woman. Many women could not even attend the reform meetings because their husbands would not let them. They thought that this was going to somehow make us rebellious and too smart.
Well women have abilities also. We are getting out there now and are showing those men what we are made out of. Now that the United States is into the Industrial Revolution, the women are not longer needed around the house to make what the family needs. It is mush easier and cheaper to purchase these items already made. This is allowing us to work outside the home at jobs that used to seem impossible.
As we gather at our conventions, the men think they can keep us from succeeding by breaking our conventions up. They will not break our spirit, no matter how hard they try! The Constitution states that "all man and women are equal." The men have deprived us from our rights for far too long and we deserve to be treated fairly from now on. We do not need the men to help us succeed, for I have done it without them for a long time.
I am proud to say that New York is helping us in this battle by giving women the right to property, custody of their children, law rights, and allowing divorce to take place. It always takes one state to show the others how good it is to do the right thing. The government is realizing that the rights of us women are essential to our society because we are the ones striving to reform education, the treatment of the mentally disabled, and slavery.
Now I would like to list all the women who are succeeding:
-Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton for organizing the Women's Rights Convention
­Emily and Elizabeth Blackwell for becoming qualified doctors among the competition of men
-Maria Mitchell for becoming an astronomer, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the first professor of Astronomy at Vassar College for Women
-Sarah Josepha Hale for editing this influential magazine that tells of our progress as women