Since human beings moved from tribal life as hunters and gatherers to agrarian life, we became increasingly a patriarchal society. Our gods were male and males tend to dominated the lives of the society. They owned women, they traded in women, they had complete control over the lives of women, and also control over their children. There was a principal in common law called "Curvature", that a married woman had no real legal existence apart from her husband. So, the challenge to patriarchy so that women could own land, earn a salary, inherit, vote, work outside the home, marry without parental permission, and have rights to their children was as major struggle of the 19th century. In 1839, the first of the statutes passed that allowed women to have some control over property and their work, and join as sound. But this formed quite slowly. In 1897, the Supreme Court of Illinois said, "It is simply impossible that a married woman should be able to control and enjoy her property as if she were sole, without practically leaving her at liberty to annul her marriage." So, fear from the patriarchal world that giving women access to their own lives would destroy the institution of marriage. So, in 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention happened. A group of women met and began the long struggle for equal rights. They said, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that men and women are equal." In the midst of all of that, Harriet Tubman who was at Seneca Falls was liberating slaves. She herself had been a slave. She'd escaped to freedom, and she was going beyond into the South and liberating slaves. She fought in the Civil War. And after the Civil War, she became a major voice in the movement for women's rights. But there was always a tension between White Supremacy amongst the women leadership, and their inclusion of women of color. So, the Seneca Falls Declaration said, "Injuries and usurpations on the part of a man towards a woman. He has made her, if married, in the eye of the laws, civilly dead." So, women reformers fought for the right to family responsibilities, to education and economic opportunities, and to the right to having a political voice. Elizabeth Cady was joined by Susan B Anthony, a famous voice in the struggle for women's rights. That movement pushed for the property rights of women, the right to vote, and finally also the temperance movement to separate, to allow women who are raising children to be assured that the paycheck would come home, and not be spent in the bar. So, this is a complicated movement. It develops over 60 years, and by the 1920s, women have established the right to vote, the right to own property, the control of their children, the right to work outside the home. So, the first wave women's movement accomplishes a great deal to change America.