The Declaration of Sentiments, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl offer three vastly different perspectives on what equality means. The Declaration of Sentiments, written by American activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, is a document that expresses the rights women ought to possess as well as list of grievances (sentiments) the women held against men. While in “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” Frederick Douglass discusses constitutional rights and the slave trade. Finally, in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, is an autobiography written by a slave girl named Harriet Jacobs. Written under the pseudonym, Linda Brent, Jacobs describes her life as a slave who fights to gain freedom for her and her children. In her autobiography, Jacobs uses her narrative to discuss race and gender equality issues. While these three sources address the same issues, each approach is different and offers multiple views.

Intersectionality provide insight and helps explain how certain people in society encounter and react to different social factors. It provides a framework for analyzing the many factors–especially race and gender–that determine how people of a certain minority class lives. Jacob’s narrative contributes an intimate window into what it is like to be a black slave woman. Her autobiography contains many firsthand experiences of being a slave, which she describes in great detail. Jacobs writes about her childhood under her old mistress, and that shatters our visualization of slavery. For instance, Jacobs writes that her old mistress as kind, caring, and a woman of honor and tried to promise Jacobs’s grandmother her freedom after her untimely death. “My mistress was so kind to me that I was always glad to do her bidding, and proud to labor for her as much as my young years would permit” (10). If we were all asked to envision a slave master, we would definitely imagine someone with a short temper, heartless, and violent. However, through Jacobs’s autobiography, we can see that not all slave masters and mistresses were cruel. It’s also important to note that while it was not common for slaves to be able to read or to even be able to read, Jacobs was still offered the opportunity. We then should not dismiss her accounts as fictional because she does come from an educated background.

The Declaration of Sentiments is a document signed by 68 women and 32 men who believed that “women [are] right-bearing individuals [to] be acknowledged and respected by society.” The convention took place in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 and its objective was to address the rights of women and draw attention to the social standing of women. Similarly, Frederick Douglass’s speech explores the social standing of slaves within the United States, drawing from his own experiences as a slave. He focuses on the Fourth of July–a notable day in America’s history–the day in which the United States was born and declared its independence from Great Britain. Douglass notes,  however, this independence did not resonate with slaves. The American values of life, liberty, and property did not apply to African-Americans and slaves. By noting his own experiences as a slave, like Jacobs, it gives their respective narratives more dimension. These three collective personal experiences offer a broader framework to understanding intersectionality.