Underpin and Overcoat

Rochester Contemporary Art Center (RoCo), the National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House, and SewGreen Rochester present a new public art installation celebrating the major women’s rights anniversaries being celebrated this year. “Underpin and Overcoat,” by artists Amelia Toelke and Andrea Miller explores the idea of jewelry as signage, which wearers adorn for both themselves and for others. Inspired by the objects Suffragists often made—such as pins, ribbons, sashes, and medals—“Underpin and Overcoat” gives greater presence to jewelry and wearable objects that are tools for protest, action, and identity-formation.

This public installation takes the form of oversized buttons that are proportionally scaled to ornament several Rochester buildings. Incorporating expressions, icons, sayings, and slogan, these buttons will be affixed to several building facades between Rochester Contemporary Art Center (137 East Ave.) and the National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House (17 Madison St.), Sew Green (438 West Main St.). “Underpin and Overcoat” aims to unify the public, inspire action, bring joy, and create a space for viewers to insert their own messages and ideals. The work aims to help us discuss opposing views, ask questions, and find commonality in shared sentiments. During this critical political season, “Underpin and Overcoat” enlarges the intersection of jewelry, political history, and social justice on the streets—much as the Suffragists did themselves.

The artists also invited local artists and organizations to contribute designs for some of the buttons to provide a platform for additional voices. Contributors include Amanda Chestnut, Tania Day, Thievin’ Stephen, Erica Jae, Abiose Spriggs, and the Seneca Art & Culture Center at Ganondagan.

In partnership with SewGreen Rochester, Christ Church, and Susan B Anthony Museum and House, RoCo will host an artist talk and Sash Memorial workshop on Saturday, July 25. Inspired by the iconic “Votes for Women” sashes worn by Suffragists from 1850 – 1920, the artists, Sew Green staff, and other collaborators invite all community members to create their own, contemporary versions of this historic piece of political ephemera. All are welcome, especially those with little sewing experience. Sashes made at this event will be collected and exhibited in the artists’ larger exhibition, Worn.

Update 7-24-2020

The public art installation by artists Amelia Toelke and Andrea Miller is now on display outside 19 Madison Street, the Anthony Museum Visitor Center!

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Andrea G. Miller is an educator and visual artist whose practice is greatly influenced by the traditions of metalsmithing and sculpture, community outreach, and public education. Miller, born and raised in the Midwest, completed her MFA from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and earned a BS in art education as well as a BFA in metals from Ball State University. She maintains an active studio practice and exhibition record outside of the classroom. In 2017, she was awarded the Lilly Endowment’s Teacher Creativity Fellowship, which allowed her to restore and travel with her vintage camper, LeRoy. She and the camper traveled over 5,000 miles from Indiana, throughout the southwest and back. Travel and adventure have become an important part of her life and she strives to empower her students to approach making and their life with the same sensibilities.

Amelia Toelke is a visual artist whose work engages the language of jewelry to explore the complex negotiation between identity, culture, and adornment. Toelke’s work activates the space between object and image, reality and representation, revealing her long-time infatuation with flatness. Through a palette of recurring imagery and tropes her work seeks the point where humor and sentimentality meet. Toelke currently lives in Chatham, NY.

ABOUT THE COLLABORATORS

Amanda Chestnut’s work focuses on the representation of history—and in particular, how the history of race and gender impacts modern narratives. Her art has been exhibited in Rochester at Firehouse Gallery, Joe Brown Gallery, University of Rochester, and High Falls Art Gallery at the Center at High Falls. She was formerly a resident at the Center for Photography at Woodstock in Woodstock, NY, and at Genesee Center for the Arts & Education in Rochester, NY. She has held graduate assistantships at Visual Studies Workshop and the Criminal Justice Department, both at the College at Brockport in Rochester. Chestnut holds an MFA graduate of Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY. As an artist interested in both upending and interpreting traditional definitions of the archive, she pairs archival images and text with contemporary imagery and her own perspective to convey the history, emotion, and lasting socio-economic impact of the past. Her previous works incorporate photographic poems that draw from archival imagery, text-based poems, and Chestnut’s hair. Most recently Chestnut curated “Verified” a group exhibition at Loud Cow in Spencerport, NY, and the Rochester Biennial at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center (RoCo). To learn more about Amanda Chestnut, her personal artistic and curatorial endeavors visit amandachestnut.com.

Tania Day-Magallon is a Mexican American artist who has collaborated in numerous art events and exhibits in Rochester. She started her art education at a young age and attended to different art institutions in Mexico City where she also began her licentiate studies in Fine Arts at a renowned university where Frida Kahlo taught for some years, contributing to an undeniable legacy in the style of many Mexican female artists. Day-Magallon has received and embraced that artistic influence during the years she lived in Mexico, and it is manifested in her artwork as she employs a rich symbolism emphasizing her own cultural identity and spiritual views. Tania Day-Magallon has also participated in art exhibits in Chicago, where she resided for several years; and she has participated in collaboratives, presentations, performances, and has given art workshops at different venues including at her private studio. In addition, Day-Magallon is also passionate about body art including henna design and tattoos; she owned a tattoo parlor in the city of Chicago which has influenced and enriched her artistic career in many aspects. Tania Day-Magallon is currently a member of WOC-Art collaborative, and other art groups and collectives where she remains active. She has also a BA from SUNY, where she continued her studies in visual arts and psychology. Learn more here: daymagallonart.com

Erica Jae was born and raised in the 19th ward of Rochester, NY. Out of love and protection, her mother allowed her only to play from in front of her house up to the stop sign that was located two houses down. Naturally, Erica grew curious about the world beyond her parameters and in college, she majored in social sciences with a concentration in mental health. Over the last 8 years, Erica has worked as an assistant manager, a clinical case manager, and a residential counselor in various group homes. Her work has been featured on NBC nightly news with Lester Holt and published in local magazines. From an early age Erica expressed herself through writing fictional short stories, poetry, and blasting hip hop from the stereo in her room. With her camera as an advocate, Erica tells the stories of the people within her community and beyond. Her work seeks beauty in hidden gems, balance with the duality of light and dark, and stillness in the poetic rhythm of the streets. Learn more here and IG: @artxericajae // @ello_yellow

Born and raised in Atlanta, Ga. Abiose Spriggs received her undergraduate degree at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio for fine art. She was introduced to art through her parents. Her mother is an educator and her father was in art administration. Abiose’s entire upbringing was centered around art thus growing her appreciation for it and leading to further study. Her art focuses primarily on her personal experience and interest as a black person in America. Expressed through various mediums, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and paint. In her paintings, she loves utilizing the medium to show the artist’s hand often against an attempt to create the absences of the artist hand. Painterly brush strokes that are free and dance across the surface confined by the square. This, to the artist, is what it’s like to be black in America. Being fed the illusion of freedom but never allowed to have it. Color has always been important in her art, the connection of color to emotion is a large driving force behind anything she draws. Spriggs is continually inspired by painters who`utilize bold colors and big canvases and those that use multiple mediums. Jacob Lawrence, Josef Albers, Sam Gilliam, David Hammonds, Cezanne, Paul Gaugin, Egon Schile, Emma Amos, Wanda Koop, Radcliffe Bailey, Virginia Jaramillo, Betye Saar, Kerry James Marshall, and Elizabeth Catlett to name a few.

Thievin’ Stephen makes art in Rochester, where part of supporting local artists is avoiding businesses that don’t. Learn more here: thievinstephen.com or Instagram: @thievinstephen

Reopening Our Doors to the Public!

ROCHESTER, NY- The National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House announced today that it will reopen its doors to the public for tours on July 1, 2020.

“In line with New York State Phase 4 Guidelines for historical sites, the Anthony Museum is pleased to announce it will reopen to the public for tours on July 1, 2020,” said Deborah L. Hughes, President & CEO.

“In following New York State guidelines, the Anthony Museum is working to ensure appropriate public health and physical distancing measures are put in place for the safety of our staff, volunteers, and visitors,” Hughes said. “We are pleased to be able to offer tours in this historic year, and know that online advance sales of tours will be an important part of facilitating this.”

In addition to the advance online sales of admission tickets, safety measures will include appropriate queue management, one-way traffic flow, and increased cleaning of facilities, as well as an introduction of hand sanitizer stations. Certain areas of the National Historic Landmark home and its Visitor Center will be off-limits to guests because of narrow spaces that make safe physical distancing impossible.

The Anthony Museum will continue to follow and review up-to-date recommendations from New York State, and will modify reopening plans if necessary.

Advance online reservations will be available to book starting June 30. Please note that the Anthony Museum will be closed on July 4th in observance of the July 4th holiday.

Click here for information on reopening and for a link to online reservations.

In Memory of George Floyd

by Deborah L. Hughes, President & CEO, National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House

“Whatever faults and failings other nations may have in their dealings with their own subjects or with other people, no other civilized nation stands condemned before the world with a series of crimes so peculiarly national,” wrote journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett in The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the Unites State, 1895.

The National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House stands in solidarity with those from the past, like Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and those from the present who have called out our nation’s long-standing hypocrisy of waving the banners of “freedom” and “justice for all” while brutally extinguishing life and liberty through our “justice system”” for others, like George Floyd.

In The Red Record, Wells-Barnett published the names of those known to have been lynched in 1893 and 1894, in order to awaken the nation to the depth of the atrocities. In 2018, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, Alabama, listing on 800 monuments thousands of names of those who have been lynched. The sacred memorial was “conceived with the hope of creating a sober, meaningful site where people can gather and reflect on America’s history of racial inequality.”

Today, we remember these women, men, and children who have died in recent years because we, as a nation, have failed to put an end to the racial terror in our communities. We grieve with their families, and we pause to say their names. We know there are many more whose names we do not know.

George Floyd
Breonna Taylor
Ahmaud Arbery
Charleena Chavon Lyles
Michael Brown
Korryn Gaines
Trayvon Martin
Sandra Bland
Eric Garner
Alexia Christian
Philando Castile
Mya Hall
Laquan McDonald
Meagan Hockaday
Tamir Rice
Jordan Davis
Alton Sterling
Janisha Fonville
Freddie Gray
Natasha McKenna
Sean Reed
Tanisha Anderson
Aura Rosser
Walter Scott
Kendrec McDade
Sheneque Proctor
Michelle Cusseaux
Botham Jean
Pearlie Golden
Gabriella Nevarez
Oscar Grant
Kenneth Chamberlain
Yvette Smith
Miriam Carey
Samuel DuBose
Kyam Livingston
Kayla Moore
Shelly Frey
Malissa Williams
Amadou Diallo
Alesia Thomas
Shantel Davis
Sharmel Edwards
Rekia Boyd
Shereese Francis
Aiyana Stanley-Jones
Tarika Wilson
Kathryn Johnston
Alberta Spruill
Kendra James
LaTanya Haggerty
Margaret LaVerne Mitchell
Tyisha Miller
Danette Daniels
Frankie Ann Perkins
Sonji Taylor
Eleanor Bumpurs

In her autobiography, Wells-Barnett shared that, “The very frequent inquiry made after my lectures by interested friends is ‘What can I do to help the cause?’ The answer always is: ‘Tell the world the facts.’”

We are grateful for the witness of Ida B. Wells Barnett, the Equal Justice Initiative, #BlackLivesMatter, #SayHerName, and any person or organization that is committed to exposing the depth and truth of our nation’s racial terrorism. We believe that we must have the courage to face the horrific truth of our past and the painful reality of our present, before we can move toward to healing and reconciliation. We are on our knees in solidarity for a beloved community.

May you be well, may you be safe, may you be courageous.

Update from the Parlor Office June 2, 2020

By Deborah L. Hughes, President & CEO

“The consent of the governed is the sole, legitimate authority of any government! This is the essential, peculiar creed of our republic. That principle is on one side of this war; and the old doctrine of might makes right, the necessary ground-work of all monarchies, is on the other. It is a life-and-death conflict between all those grand, universal, man-respecting principles, which we call by the comprehensive term democracy, and all those partial, person-respecting, class-favoring elements which we group together under that silver-slippered word aristocracy. If this war does not mean that, it means nothing.”
~Antoinette Brown Blackwell, 1863

Susan B. Anthony called us out in 1863, “It is a war to found an empire on the negro in slavery, and shame on us if we do not make it a war to establish the negro in freedom—against whom the whole nation, North and South, East and West, in one mighty conspiracy, has combined from the beginning.”Our nation, supposedly founded on the ideals that all are “created equal” and that the government gets its power and authority from the people, has waged a war against humanity, in direct contradiction to the ideals of liberty, justice, and equality. The Civil War was not a war between the north and the south, nor did it end in 1865. It was a war for the soul of our nation, and we are still in the midst of the battle.

Anthony had a challenge, “I therefore hail the day when the Government shall recognize that it is a war for freedom. We talk about returning to the old Union—”the Union as it was,” and “the Constitution as it is”—about “restoring our country to peace and prosperity—to the blessed conditions that existed before the war!” I ask you what sort of peace, what sort of prosperity, have we had? Since the first slave-ship sailed up the James River with its human cargo, and there, on the soil of the Old Dominion, sold it to the highest bidder, we have had nothing but war. When that pirate captain landed on the shores of Africa, and there kidnapped the first stalwart negro, and fastened the first manacle, the struggle between that captain and that negro was the commencement of the terrible war in the midst of which we are today. Between the slave and the master there has been war, and war only. This is only a new form of it. No, no; we ask for no return to the old conditions. We ask for something better. We want a Union that is a Union in fact, a Union in spirit, not a sham.”

We put down slavery, but we took up weapons like lynching, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, and racial profiling. We’ve waged war by denying access to businesses, clubs, and board rooms. We’ve waged war by segregating classrooms and separating school districts. We’ve waged war by intimidation. We’ve waged war by creating food deserts and accepting higher infant mortality and disparate health outcomes. We’ve waged war by moving away, or turning away.

Perhaps we have not been personally guilty of these crimes, but we must understand that we are complicit. We’ve paid for this war with our tax dollars and we’ve benefited from this war with our privilege. We must be willing to listen to those who have been under attack for far too long, and together, we can actively engage in ending this war. Then, perhaps, we’ll have a union in fact, not a sham.

An Open Letter to Nurses from the Nursing Friends of the Anthony Museum

An Open Letter to Nurses from

#susanbthanksnurses

Dear Nurses:

We are an ad hoc group of leaders in nursing education, research, and practice who are thinking of you.

We appreciate the stresses you are experiencing as you care for persons who are victims of Covid-19. We praise your life-sustaining care and support.

You are dedicated nurses who are tireless in preventing further deleterious effects during patients’ struggles to survive. We know so many are recovering, thanks to your care. We also understand that it is heartbreaking when someone does not survive, despite your excellent care.

We admire the nursing care you are giving to patients, and we appreciate that you are providing a caring presence for those who cannot have family members or loved ones at their bedside during this pandemic.

We are thinking of you. We appreciate you. We thank you.

Sincerely, the Nursing Friends of the Anthony Museum

Calls to Action

Nurses: Amidst this this historic health crisis, we encourage you to record or share your stories using #susanbthanksnurses, to forward them to the Rochester Medical Museum and Archives, attention Kathleen Britton, curator, here.

Friends of Nurses: We encourage you to express your support by lighting a candle in honor of nurses and midwives, and post an image to social media using #susanbthanksnurses

*The Nursing Friends of the National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House was formed in 2009 to create and promote the connections between nursing, Susan B. Anthony, and Rochester’s history. Learn more about this group here.

Museum Shop Mother’s Day Specials

Mother’s Day Specials! 

We know this upcoming Holiday might be particularly difficult while physical distancing. We want to help show Moms how important they are in our lives, so our Museum Shop has created some special offers for Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day Gift Membership

Mother’s Day Gift Bundles

A few of the options include:

The Inspires Me Bundle

The 200 Years Gift Bundle

The Museum Gift Bundle

UPDATE: Thank you to all who supported the Anthony Museum with your Mother’s Day purchases. Many of these bundles will be available until sold out. Scheduled curbside pickup has been added as a regular feature )in addition to our usual shipping). Read all about it here .

Update from the Parlor Office March 20, 2020

So much has happened since our emails on Sunday. We hope that you and those dear to you are well, but we know that some of you have been directly affected by the virus.
Almost everyone is affected by current events in some way, whether in the form of threat to health and well-being, changes in income or assets, job loss or new ways of working, more people in living spaces, dear ones out of reach, or the anxiety fueled  by constant updates coming through on various communication channels. We have never travelled this path together.
At the Anthony Museum, we will remain closed to the public for tours, programs, and in-person meetings until further notice.
As we scramble to adjust our programs and schedules, we are more keenly aware of the disappointment of those who are not able to celebrate a graduation, present a concert, musical, or play, complete a “once-in-a-lifetime” excursion, or share wedding vows with friends. Our hearts go out to those who cannot be surrounded by friends and family in times of illness, anxiety, or grief.
Most of our staff are now working remotely, so the best way to reach us may be by email. We are finding new ways connect and work with each other, and we are planning new ways to connect with you. Some staff are attending to necessary functions on the Museum campus, like making sure all is safe and secure at our historic buildings, processing incoming gifts, and paying bills. We are following all recommended protocols to reduce the risk of exposure or transmission.
Although our admissions and museum shop revenue stream has stopped, we have been able to continue paying our dedicated staff, thanks to your generous support through gifts and memberships. On their behalf and mine, thank you.
As before, we will continue to keep you informed, and as Susan B. Anthony closed, we “will be anxious to hear how you get along–“
Be well,
Deborah
Deborah L. Hughes
President & CEO
National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House
17 Madison Street
Rochester, NY  14608

Susan B. Anthony 200th Birthday Celebration Dinner

Join us at this historic event as we celebrate Susan B. Anthony’s 200th Birthday with with a special dinner and fundraiser on February 12, 2020 at the Joseph A. Floreano Riverside Convention Center.  Dinner is at 6PM with a reception immediately preceding (cash bar). The hall will open at 4:30pm, and the general reception will open at 5:00pm

The evening will feature the keynote speaker, Tena Clark. You may know her as the author of Southern Discomfort, or as a Grammy award-winning musician and composer. But there is a lot more to this woman than you know already. Come find out!

Celebrating Susan B. Anthony’s birthday is a tradition that began in her lifetime, and this year the celebration rises to a new level.  At the same time, the celebration  continues to honor contemporary women who continue her legacy, and to raise awareness of the educational and inspirational programs offered by the Anthony Museum.

Reservations are now closed.

If you would like to view a video of the event, click here.

Monday Lecture Series 2019-2020

The National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House proudly presents the 17th season of its popular Monday Lecture Series. This season’s line-up features eight guest speakers covering a range of timely topics inspired by the life, work, and legacy of Susan B. Anthony.  

Date Topic
Sept. 16, 2019 Race & Resistance in the Rochester Schools

Justin Murphy, Democrat & Chronicle staff

(Tea sold out)

Oct. 21, 2019  Frankie Merson: A Force for Change

Dr. Stephanie E. Craig, Professor of Social Work, Keuka College
(Tea sold out)

Dec. 16, 2019  Intimate Partner Violence: Past & Present Dr. Catherine Cerulli, Director of Susan B. Anthony Center and the Laboratory of Interpersonal Violence and Victimization
(Tea sold out)
Jan. 27, 2020 Native American Women and the Fight for Reproductive Justice
Dr. Brianna Theobald, Professor of History, University of Rochester
(Tea sold out)
March 16, 2020 Cancelled
(Tea sold out)
April 20, 2020 The Genuine Article: The University of Rochester Suffrage Collection
Autumn Haag, Special Collections Librarian/Archivist for Research & Collections, University of Rochester
(Lunch and Tea sold out)
May 18, 2020 Susan B. Anthony, Racist? Dr. Laura Free,
Professor of History, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
(Lunch and Tea sold out)
June 1, 2020 Carrie Chapman Catt: the woman behind the passage of the 19th Amendment
​Dr. Jennifer M. Lloyd, History Professor Emerita,
The College at Brockport
(Lunch and Tea sold out)

Each presentation is offered as a catered lunch at noon  ($35/each) and an informal tea at 2 pm (All luncheons and teas are sold out). These programs fill quickly, register soon.

For more information call 585.279.7490.

Misrepresenting Susan B. Anthony on Abortion

Misrepresenting Susan B. Anthony on Abortion

by Harper D. Ward1

Originally posted Feb 15, 2018

A controversy has developed over the claim by some anti-abortion activists that Susan B. Anthony, the best known of the early women’s rights leaders, would support their movement if she were alive today. This claim is based to a large extent on “Marriage and Maternity,” an article written anonymously that disagreed with calls in a medical journal for laws against abortion but nonetheless deplored it as “child-murder.”2 It appeared in The Revolution, a sixteen-page, weekly, women’s rights newspaper that Anthony published from 1868 to 1870 with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury as editors. This article, these activists claim, was written by Anthony herself. Their evidence? It was in her newspaper, and it was signed “A.”

An examination of every page of The Revolution reveals many articles signed “S.B.A.” but only a handful signed “A.” The latter articles contain some uncomfortable surprises for those who want to believe that Anthony wrote them. One of them, for example, expressed disagreement with Scientific American magazine on a technical controversy about mechanics, hardly Anthony’s field of expertise. Another article by “A.” quarreled with The Revolution‘s position on capital and labor, which lead to a debate in a subsequent issue in which the editors addressed its author as “Mr. A.

Clearly there is a fatal flaw in the claim that Susan B. Anthony was the “A.” who wrote “Marriage and Maternity.”  Her newspaper published a large number of articles that were contributed by its readers on a variety of topics, many of whom signed themselves anonymously, often with a single initial, including “A.” Nevertheless, some anti-abortion activists use this “child-murder” quote by “A.” to give the impression that Anthony had expressed opinions that would support their cause. One of their organizations, the Susan B. Anthony List, is even named after her.

Claims about “A.” and “Marriage and Maternity”

In an article called “Susan B. Anthony: Pro-Life Feminist,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List says, “Most logical people would agree, then, that writings signed by ‘A’ in a paper that Anthony funded and published were a reflection of her own opinions.”3 (This mistaken idea will be examined in more detail below.) She goes even further in another article, saying, “The proprietor and business manager of the early feminist newspaper The Revolution, Anthony published many articles under a simple pseudonym, ‘A.’ In an article entitled ‘Marriage and Maternity,’ Anthony referred to abortion as ‘the horrible crime of child-murder.'”4

Mary Krane Derr’s book ProLife Feminism reprints the entire “Marriage and Maternity” article under the heading “‘A Dreadful Volume of Heart-Histories’ by Susan B. Anthony.” Derr admits in a note at the back of the book that the article was actually signed “A.”, not “Susan B. Anthony,” but argues that it must have been written by Anthony.5

Joseph Dellapenna, a professor of law at Villanova University, discusses this article in a book called, ironically, Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History, in which he inaccurately describes “Marriage and Maternity” as “an editorial by Susan B. Anthony.”6 Displaying disturbingly poor scholarship, he gives no indication that this article (which was not an editorial) was actually signed anonymously or that academic experts on Anthony disparage the idea that she wrote it.

These claims certainly have not gone unchallenged. Ann D. Gordon, the leading academic expert on Susan B. Anthony, and Lynn Sherr, a journalist and author of a biography of Anthony, have sharply criticized assertions that Anthony wrote “Marriage and Maternity”, saying that she has simply been “imagined to be its author.”7 Tracy Thomas, a law professor at the University of Akron, also disputes this claim in a sixty-eight page academic paper called “Misappropriating Women’s History in the Law and Politics of Abortion,” which discusses the misrepresentation of the beliefs of early women’s rights leaders by some members of the anti-abortion movement.8

Who Wrote for The Revolution?

The Revolution was not created to express Susan B. Anthony’s point of view only. On the contrary, one of its goals was to provide a forum in which its readers could exchange opinions from a variety of viewpoints. Not surprisingly, The Revolution contains articles written by many people, often anonymously. Some of the anonymous articles were signed with a pen name, such as “Argus” and “Alpha,” while others were signed with one or more initials.

The Revolution cheekily declared that, “those who write for our columns are responsible only for what appears under their own names. Hence if old Abolitionists and Slaveholders, Republicans and Democrats, Presbyterians and Universalists, Saints, Sinners and the Beecher family find themselves side by side in writing up the question of Woman Suffrage, they must pardon each other’s differences on all other points.”9 This policy applied not only to contributions from the newspaper’s readers but also to its editors, who were free to express their own opinions even if that led to disagreement between them in the newspaper’s pages.10

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury, the newspaper’s editors, provided a large part of The Revolution‘s content. Stanton was a close friend and co-worker of Anthony. Together they provided leadership to the women’s rights movement for decades. Pillsbury was an experienced editor who had worked for other progressive newspapers, including the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Stanton and Pillsbury signed their articles in The Revolution with their initials, “E.C.S.” and “P.P.”, or with their full names.

Susan B. Anthony, who handled the business side of the newspaper, provided less of its content. Even so, she produced over sixty items, many of them short notices about the paper itself, such as appeals for assistance with getting new subscribers. A careful examination of every page of The Revolution shows that she wrote fifty-four items that were signed “S.B.A.” and another fifteen that were signed with her full name.11 As will be demonstrated below, she did not sign any articles as “A.”

Articles Signed with One Initial

Anonymity was necessary for those contributors whose personal circumstances prevented them from being publicly associated with The Revolution. Among the small army of correspondents who wrote articles for The Revolution anonymously, many signed themselves with a single initial, as the sampling below illustrates. Susan B. Anthony herself obviously had no such need for anonymity.

  • “Marriage and Maternity” by A, July 8, 1869, page 4
  • “The Working Women’s Convention” by B, March 17, 1870, page 172
  • “Woman as Soldier” by C, February 11, 1869, page 86
  • “Brussels—The Riots” by D, April 23, 1868, page 251
  • “Gallery Reserved for Women” by F, April 7, 1870, page 213
  • “The Weaker Sex” by G, February 10, 1870, page 90
  • “Inalienable Rights vs. a Few Popular Wrongs” by H, February 18, 1869, page 102
  • “Miss Anthony at Decatur, Ill” by J, April 7, 1870, page 213
  • “Reasons Why Some Marriages Are Unhappy” by L, April 22, 1869, page 243
  • “Ventilation” by M, June 11, 1868, page 354
  • “Another Lady Preacher” by Q, November 11, 1869, page 291
  • “The New York City Woman’s Suffrage Association” by R, April 21, 1870, page 251
  • “New Hampshire Women” by T, March 12, 1868, page 157
  • “A Tobacco Factory” by U, January 20, 1870, page 39
  • “I’m Glad You Said It” by V, January 21, 1869, page 36
  • “Woman’s Parliament” by W, November 18, 1869, page 308

Items That Were Signed “A.”

According to Dannenfelser, as quoted above, “Anthony published many articles under a simple pseudonym, ‘A.'” in The Revolution. That statement is completely false.12 There are only eight items in The Revolution that were signed that way, and none of them can reasonably be attributed to Anthony. They are as follows, listed by their date of publication:

1. “Mechanical Science: One Revolution or Two?”, March 26, 1868.13 This article by “A.” takes issue with the Scientific American‘s explanation of one aspect of what happens when one wheel revolves around the rim of another. No one would claim that Susan B. Anthony ever challenged the Scientific American on an issue of mechanics.

2. “Practical Science”, April 9, 1868.14 Clearly written by the same person, this article continues the objections to the Scientific American‘s explanations of mechanical issues that had appeared two weeks earlier.

3. “The Patent Office”, May 21, 1868.15 This article calls for “at least four-fifths” of the examiners in the U.S. Patent Office to be removed due to incompetence, apparently based on the author’s experience with them. No one would claim that Anthony had any interest in the Patent Office or would call for mass firings. It is possible that this “A.” is the same mechanically-inclined person who had written the March 26 and April 9 articles listed above.

4. “Woman and Finance”, October 29, 1868.16 This article takes issue with an editorial in The Revolution called “Largest Store in the World,” which says that capital exerts a cruel dominance over labor.17 Not so, this “A.” says, “Capital is not, nor can it be antagonistic to the interests of labor.” Furthermore, the author asserts, it is misguided to try to influence the price of labor, which should be set by the open market. These ideas conflict with Anthony’s known beliefs and can be seen as a criticism of actions she had just taken. The Revolution had recently announced that Anthony had organized a meeting in the newspaper’s offices to establish the Working Women’s Association, whose goals included the use of labor union tactics to win higher wages for women.18

In a subsequent issue, The Revolution printed letters from readers who disagreed with this article. Their letters were preceded by an editorial comment that referred to its author as “Mr. A.”19

Actually, there is reason to believe that the three preceding articles by “A.” also were written by a man. The Revolution enthusiastically printed stories about women who were engaging in activities that had been traditionally restricted to men, and it was keen to refute “the slander that there are no women’s names in the Patent Office reports.”20 If women were challenging the Scientific American on issues of mechanics and interacting with the Patent Office, The Revolution would have found a way to tell the world about it, but it did not do so.

5. “A Washington Convert”, March 11, 1869.21 This writer, a woman, describes herself as a recent convert to the women’s rights movement. Obviously, this “A.” is not Anthony.

6. Untitled letter, June 3, 1869.22 This “A.” slyly implies that women’s rights advocates are being unreasonable. Obviously this is not Anthony either.

7. “Marriage and Maternity”, July 8, 1869.23 This writer deplores abortion as “child-murder” while disagreeing with an article in the Medical Gazette that called for laws to suppress it. The article includes fervently religious language (“… thunder in her ear, ‘Whoso defileth the body defileth the temple of the Holy Ghost!'”), a sure sign that it was not written by Anthony, who avoided such religiosity. (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, her close friend, described Anthony as an agnostic.24) This is the article that some anti-abortion activists claim was written by Anthony, hoping to convince people that she supported laws to suppress abortion, the very thing, ironically, that this “A.” advised against.

8. “Suffrage”, December 9, 1869.25 This “A.” says that women “ought to be allowed the right of suffrage” even though “men may not admit women into competition with themselves in the various occupations of society, may deny their intellectual and physical ability.” Anthony would not have used this approach to support women’s suffrage. To her, women’s rights were to be recognized and respected, not “allowed,” which would imply that it was proper for men to determine what rights women should have. She also would not have referred to disparaging opinions about women’s abilities without adding some sharp comments.

These eight are the only articles in The Revolution that were signed “A.” The one identified by The Revolution as having been written by “Mr. A.” could not possibly have been written by Anthony, and the contents of the others are not consistent with what we know about her either. Anthony did not write any of the articles that were signed “A.”

To continue making the claim that Anthony referred to abortion as “child-murder,” one would have to claim that she wrote “Marriage and Maternity” and signed it as “A.”:

  • despite signing herself as “S.B.A.” or “Susan B. Anthony” well over sixty times elsewhere in her newspaper and not as “A.”,
  • despite the fact that the world’s foremost authority on Anthony disparages the idea that she wrote that article or signed any of her articles as “A.”,
  • despite the confusion she would create by signing her name with a single letter, a device used by many of The Revolution‘s anonymous contributors,
  • despite the extreme confusion she would create by signing her name in precisely the same way as an anonymous contributor who was already familiar to her readers as a man whose views on capital and labor were contrary to hers.

Another Misrepresentation

“Marriage and Maternity” is the best-known example of a text that has been misrepresented by some members of the anti-abortion movement, but it is not the only one. Feminists for Life, an anti-abortion group, distributes misleading campaign materials that claim to quote Anthony as saying that she had worked to “bring about a better state of things for mothers generally, so that their unborn little ones could not be willed away from them.”

Presenting this as a direct quote by Anthony is disingenuous. This statement comes from the memoirs of Frances Willard, president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Willard wrote that Anthony had spoken “after this fashion” during a conversation, making it clear that she was not attempting to replicate exactly what Anthony had said. Unfortunately, Willard’s reconstruction of that conversation, which is more extensive than what is quoted here, has Anthony speaking in a sentimental and ingratiating way that is completely unlike the way she actually spoke.26

In any case, Anthony is not referring to abortion here but to laws that gave husbands almost complete control over the family. A husband had the legal right to specify in his will that “his” children should be taken away from their mother if he died. As Matilda Joslyn Gage, Anthony’s colleague, said, “the father is assumed to be the sole owner of the children, who can be bound out, willed or given away without the consent or even the knowledge of the mother.”27 Anthony was protesting the injustice of laws that permitted a husband to “will away” even the unborn child of his pregnant wife.

No Better Evidence

Why would anyone attempt to use such unwieldy and farfetched examples as evidence that Susan B. Anthony supported the criminalization of abortion? Why base so much of your case on a quote from an anonymous “A.” (who possibly was a man)? Why print Anthony’s picture on anti-abortion posters along with a misleading “quote” that actually is someone else’s imprecise memory of what Anthony said about unjust marriage laws? Why not find better quotes among Anthony’s actual speeches and writings? The answer is obvious: there are no better quotes. There were some early women’s rights activists who said that abortion should be illegal, but Anthony, who is by far the best-known, was not one of them.

Researchers have identified only two occasions on which Anthony even mentioned abortion: during one of her speeches and in her diary. Neither supports the claims that some anti-abortion activists are making.

On the first occasion, in a speech called “Social Purity,” she deplored the harm to family life caused by the “monster evil” of alcohol abuse, saying, “The prosecutions on our courts for breach of promise, divorce, adultery, bigamy, seduction, rape; the newspaper reports every day of every year of scandals and outrages, of wife murders and paramour shooting, of abortions and infanticides, are perpetual reminders of men’s incapacity to cope successfully with this monster evil of society.”28 Some anti-abortionists claim that Anthony’s allusion to abortion in this speech is evidence that she opposed it. That can’t be right because Anthony also alluded to divorce in that same sentence yet later in the speech spoke caustically of those who opposed it, saying, “We have had quite enough of the sickly sentimentalism which counts the woman a heroine and a saint for remaining the wife of a drunken, immoral husband.” Listing abortion as one of the consequences of alcohol abuse is not the same as calling for it to be outlawed.

Anthony mentioned abortion again later in that speech, this time in the context of the injustice of laws that intimately affect women but are made and enforced by men: “The statutes for marriage and divorce, for adultery, breach of promise, seduction, rape, bigamy, abortion, infanticide—all were made by men. They, alone, decide who are guilty of violating these laws and what shall be their punishment, with judge, jury and advocate all men, with no woman’s voice heard in our courts.” What practical difference would it make if women participated equally in the making and enforcement of such laws? Anthony didn’t say specifically. But isn’t it clear that she expected it to lead to increased sympathy and consideration for women in these situations?

Anthony’s other reference to abortion was a very brief entry that she made in her diary after learning that her sister-in-law had been gravely ill for weeks because of a self-induced abortion, a not uncommon practice at the time that involved primitive and often dangerous techniques. Anthony wrote, “She will rue the day she forces nature,” a statement that in no way indicates that Anthony was in favor of laws to prohibit medical professionals from providing abortions.29

Anthony’s long career of public speaking provided many occasions for her to speak about abortion if she chose to do so. The plain fact, however, is that Susan B. Anthony almost never referred to abortion, and when she did, she said nothing to indicate that she wanted it banned by law.

Conclusion

Ann D. Gordon is the leading academic expert on Anthony. For years, Gordon was head of the “Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Papers” project, a massive undertaking to collect and annotate all documents by those pioneering women’s rights activists. She is also the editor of a six-volume work called The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. She has read everything by Anthony many times over. Gordon has frequently expressed frustration with those who attempt to portray Anthony as an avid opponent of abortion.

In an article co-written with Lynn Sherr, Gordon said that “Anthony spent no time on the politics of abortion. It was of no interest to her.”30 Gordon also said that Anthony “never voiced an opinion about the sanctity of fetal life…and she never voiced an opinion about using the power of the state to require that pregnancies be brought to term.”31 In a book of essays about Anthony, Gordon pointed out that if, as anti-abortionists claim, Anthony and her allies were passionately opposed to abortion, then someone needs to explain, “why did they never do anything about it?” Such misrepresentation, she says, results in “what historians call an ‘invented memory’—history without foundation in the evidence but with modern utility.”32

We need to listen to Ann Gordon, whose judgement in this matter is definitive. There is no one who knows more about what Anthony wrote and said.


Footnotes

Most of the footnotes below have links that will display the actual content of the sources being cited. Several of them have links to scans of issues of The Revolution, which are made available by the Watzek Library of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Their collection of every issue of The Revolution can be viewed HERE.

1. Harper D. Ward is the pen name of an independent historical researcher.

2. “A.”, “Marriage and Maternity,” The Revolution, July 8, 1869, p. 4.

3. Marjorie Dannenfelser, “Susan B. Anthony: Pro-Life Feminist,” Washington Post, May 21, 2010. This article also includes a spurious quote by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who, Dannenfelser claims, said, “it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.” According to folklore within the anti-abortion movement, this statement appeared in a letter from Stanton that supposedly was discovered in Julia Ward Howe’s diary. No one has been able to show, however, that this story is based on fact or that this letter actually existed. See Tracy A. Thomas, “Misappropriating Women’s History in the Law and Politics of Abortion,” Seattle University Law Review, Vol. 36, No. 1 (2012), pp. 36-40. Lynn Sherr and Ann D. Gordon provide reason to believe that the letter never existed in “No, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton Were Not Antiabortionists,” Time, November 10, 2015.

4. Marjorie Dannenfelser, “Happy 190th Birthday Suzy B!”, February 15, 2010, posted on the Susan B. Anthony List’s website.

5. Mary Krane Derr, Pro-Life Feminism: Yesterday and Today, Feminism and Nonviolence Studies Association, 2005, pp. 44 and 413, note 11.

6. Joseph Dellapenna, Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History, Carolina Academic Press, 2006, pp. 398 and 374, footnote 29.

7. Ann Gordon and Lynn Sherr, “Sarah Palin is no Susan B. Anthony,” Washington Post, May 21, 2010.

8. Thomas, “Misappropriating Women’s History in the Law and Politics of Abortion,” p. 15.

9. “Prospectus of The Revolution for 1870,” The Revolution, November 18, 1869, pp. 315-316.

10. Stanton and Pillsbury, the editors of The Revolution, disagreed in its pages, for example, about Mary Todd Lincoln, the president’s wife. They also differed in their approach to abortion, which fortunately did not create a problem for the newspaper because that issue wasn’t nearly as divisive then as it is today. Pillsbury voiced opposition to both infanticide and abortion, expressing his views in several signed editorials, views that are sometimes wrongly attributed to Anthony and Stanton simply because they appeared in The Revolution. Stanton, on the other hand, spoke only of infanticide in the editorials she signed. (There are also unsigned editorials that mention these topics. There is no way to be sure which of the two editors wrote them, but one can make educated guesses based on similarity to their signed editorials.) The editorials signed by Stanton call for understanding and compassion toward women whose circumstances had driven them to end the life of their newborn infants. As she did with almost any topic, Stanton reframed the issue to illustrate the importance of women’s rights. Stanton wrote a series of editorials about Hester Vaughn, a young woman who had been sentenced to hang for killing her newborn child. The Revolution described her as a, “poor, ignorant, friendless and forlorn girl who had killed her newborn child because she knew not what else to do with it,” and placed the blame for the infant’s death on a society that oppressed women (“Infanticide,” August 6, 1868, p. 74). Declaring that Vaughn had not received a fair trial, and questioning whether the infant’s death had been deliberate, Stanton and Susan B. Anthony launched a successful campaign for her to be pardoned. Stanton wrote similarly about other cases of infanticide. Telling the story of a woman who was executed for throwing her newborn child into the sea, Stanton expressed compassion for the woman (“God and the angels pitied that pale mother”) and placed all the guilt on the man (a priest) who had fathered the child. (“Hester Vaughn,” November 19, 1868, p. 312.) Stanton’s editorials on this topic scandalized some people, as did aspects of her call for women to consciously improve the human race by, for example, avoiding having children with habitual drunkards so as not to propagate undesirable moral traits. She created a stir at a national meeting by saying, “Every woman knows we are bringing into the world moral monstrosities. When physical monstrosities are born the physician thinks it is perfectly just to put them out of the world.” Her opponents accused her of condoning infanticide, a charge that she denied. See Tracy A. Thomas, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Feminist Foundations of Family Law, 2016, NYU Press, pp. 168-170.

11. January 29, 1868: pages 52, 58; April 2: page 200; April 9: 209; April 16: 232; April 23: 248; April 30: 264; May 7: 283; July 9: 1; July 16: 24; August 6: 72; September 10: 155; September 17: 168, 169, 170; October 22: 242; November 5: 282; November 26: 328; December 31: 411; January 14, 1869: 24; January 21: 40; January 28: 56; February 4: 69, 72 (twice); February 11: 88, 90 (twice), 92; February 18: 104; March 18: 173; March 25: 183, 186, 187; April 29: 264; May 8: 280; May 13: 296; June 10: 353 (three times), 363; June 17: 369; July 22: 40 (twice); July 29: 56, 61; August 26: 123(twice); September 16: 171; September 23: 186; September 30: 201; October 7: 217, 218; November 4: 281; December 9: 363; December 16: 378; January 6, 1870: 11; January 13: 28; January 20: 42, 43; February 24: 120; March 3: 140; March 10: 154; March 17: 172; March 24: 186; April 14: 235; May 12: 297; May 26: 326, 328.

12. This is not the only time that Dannenfelser has disregarded the facts. In an article in The Hill called “‘Active Antagonism’ on International Women’s Day,” Dannenfelser wrote, “Susan B. Anthony, the founding mother of the movement for women’s rights, said that abortion filled her with ‘indignation, and awakened active antagonism.'” Anthony said nothing of the sort. Elizabeth Blackwell wrote those words, which appear on page 30 of her memoirs.

13. “A.”, “Mechanical Science: One Revolution or Two?,” The Revolution, March 26, 1868, p. 186.

14. “A.”, “Practical Science,” The Revolution, “April 9, 1868, p. 218.

15. “A.”, “The Patent Office,” The Revolution, May 21, 1868, p. 316.

16. “A.”, “Woman and Finance,” The Revolution, October 29, 1868, p. 262.

17. “Largest Store in the World,” The Revolution, September 3, 1868, p. 136.

18. “Working Women’s Association,” The Revolution, September 24, 1868, p. 181.

19. “Capital and Labor,” The Revolution, November 12, 1868, pp. 301-302.

20. The Revolution printed many stories about women in non-traditional roles, including this one: “Woman as Inventor: Miss Dewey of New Albany, Indiana, has invented a quilting attachment to a sewing machine. The Cleveland Leader adds hers to the roll of those who are a standing refutation of the slander that there are no women’s names in the Patent Office reports.” See The Revolution, April 22, 1869, p. 253.

21. “A.”, “A Washington Convert,” The Revolution, March 11, 1869, p. 148.

22. “A.”, “Untitled letter beneath “What the People Say,” The Revolution, June 3, 1869, p. 347.

23. “A.”, “Marriage and Maternity,” The Revolution, July 8, 1869, p. 4.

24. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty Years and More, European Publishing Company, New York, 1898, p. 161.

25. “A.”, “Suffrage,” The Revolution, December 9, 1869, p. 356.

26. Frances E. Willard, The Autobiography of an American Woman: Glimpses of Fifty Years, National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 1904, p. 598.

27. Matilda Joslyn Gage, Woman, Church and State, Charles H. Kerr, Chicago, 1893, p. 329.

28. “Social Purity“, a speech given by Susan B. Anthony on March 14, 1875. It appears here on a resource page provided by PBS for information about Anthony and Stanton.

29. The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Volume 3, edited by Ann D. Gordon, Rutgers University Press, 2003, pp. 213-214. Women who induced their own abortions, as Anthony’s sister-in-law did, often did so with quack medicines. These concoctions, whose promoters proclaimed them to have all sorts of wondrous healing powers, could contain arsenic, opium, and other dangerous ingredients. Declaring that it would “indulge in no Gross Personalities and insert no Quack or Immoral Advertisements, so common even in Religious Newspapers,” The Revolution refused to publish advertisements for any type of quack medicine.

30. Ann D. Gordon and Lynn Sherr, “Sarah Palin is no Susan B. Anthony,” Washington Post, May 21, 2010.

31. Allison Stevens, “Susan B. Anthony’s Abortion Position Spurs Scuffle,” Women’s eNews, October 6, 2006.

32. Ann D. Gordon, “Knowing Susan B. Anthony: The Stories We Tell of a Life,” in Susan B. Anthony and the Struggle for Equal Rights, edited by Christine Ridarsky and Mary Huth, University of Rochester Press, 2012, p. 224.


Copyright © 2018 by Harper D. Ward