Ohio Women's Convention at Salem in 1850

The Ohio Women's Convention at Salem in 1850 met on April 19–20, 1850 in Salem, Ohio, a center for reform activity. It was the third in a series of women's rights conventions that began with the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. It was the first of these conventions to be organized on a statewide basis. About five hundred people attended. All of the convention's officers were women. Men were not allowed to vote, sit on the platform or speak during the convention. The convention sent a memorial to the convention that was preparing a new Ohio state constitution, asking it to provide for women's right to vote.

The Ohio Women's Convention at Salem met on April 19–20, 1850 in Salem, Ohio. About five hundred people attended. It met at the Second Baptist Church and the Friends (Quaker) Meeting House. It was the third in a series of women's rights conventions that began with the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 and continued with the Rochester Convention two weeks later. Both of these were regional gatherings in western New York State. The Salem convention was the first women's rights convention to be organized on a statewide basis. The first to be organized on a national basis was the National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts in October, 1850.

Salem was a center for reform activity. Its inhabitants included a number of anti-slavery activists, many of them Quakers.The Anti-Slavery Bugle, an abolitionist newspaper, was published in Salem beginning in 1845. A local group of the Progressive Friends, an association of Quakers who separated from the main body partly so they could be freer to work for such causes as abolitionism and women's rights, was formed in Salem in 1849. The local school board was composed of abolitionists from both wings of that movement: the followers of William Lloyd Garrison, who opposed involvement in political activity, and supporters of the Liberty Party, an abolitionist political party. All eight members of the school board had female relatives who participated in the Salem convention.

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