1800s: In America, white women are not allowed to vote, own property or divorce their husbands, and until the Civil War, black women are held as chattel in slavery. The suffrage movement gains strength mid-century, especially after it joins with the anti-slavery movement. White and black women activists organize conventions—the most notable of which was the Seneca Falls Convention in 1849—where they deliver powerful speeches, drawing parallels between the enslavement of blacks and the domestic enslavement of white women. The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment—which gives black men the right to vote—ultimately splits the civil rights movement from the women's movement.

1920: The Nineteenth Amendment grants white and black women the right to vote.

1960s and 1970s: The women's movement in the nineteenth century is known today as the first wave of feminism. In the 1960s and 70s...