This lecture will be presented online, offered to registered guests at 1pm ET.
Space is limited—make your reservations today online here or call 585.279.7490.
Individual lectures are $25 each. NOTE: The link to the online lecture will be sent to registrants the Friday before the scheduled lecture.
This lecture will be presented online, offered to registered guests at 1pm ET.
Space is limited—make your reservations today online here or call 585.279.7490.
Individual lectures are $25 each. NOTE: The link to the online lecture will be sent to registrants the Friday before the scheduled lecture.
This lecture will be presented online, offered to registered guests at 1pm ET.
Space is limited—make your reservations today online here or call 585.279.7490.
Individual lectures are $25 each. NOTE: The link to the online lecture will be sent to registrants the Friday before the scheduled lecture.
This lecture will be presented online, offered to registered guests at 1pm ET.
Space is limited—make your reservations today online here or call 585.279.7490.
Individual lectures are $25 each. NOTE: The link to the online lecture will be sent to registrants the Friday before the scheduled lecture.
Create a sash and celebrate our right to vote!
In partnership with SewGreen Rochester, Christ Church, and the National Susan B. Anthony Museum & 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.
This event is organized in conjunction with the multi-site public art installation “Underpin and Overcoat,” both a part of the exhibition “Worn.”
Location: Outside in park next to the Rochester Contemporary Art Center,
Learn more here.
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.
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.
At sixteen, you would expect Lola DeAscentiis to be learning TikTok dances in her friend’s basement or haphazardly attempting to hydro dip her sneakers on the driveway. Instead, DeAscentiis commits her time to being one of the youngest tour guides at the National Susan B. Anthony Museum & House in downtown Rochester, NY.
“I’ve always had a passion for women’s history,” said DeAcentiis of becoming a docent. “Being right in Rochester, why wouldn’t I take that opportunity?”
A sophomore at Our Lady of Mercy High School, DeAscentiis began working at the Anthony Museum when she was only in eighth grade. However, because of her age (she was thirteen at the time), she was not allowed to give tours.
Instead, DeAscentiis jumped into working on community outreach initiatives such as the Anthony Museum’s Girl Scouts Program, which aims to connect social justice causes of today to Anthony’s legacy and life’s work. When DeAscentiis began high school last year, she embarked on a rigorous training schedule to finally become a docent at the Anthony Museum.
“I don’t want to say it came naturally since it was a lot of work, but getting to learn from the other docents and doing some reading on my own was something I really enjoyed doing,”she said. On the final tour before she received her certification, she caught the eye of playwright Mark Mobley, who incorporated her story into The Rochester Philharmonic’s bicentennial celebration of Anthony’s work, Women’s Suffrage: Past + Present. Her story was one of a select few featured among the likes of Mayor Lovely A. Warren; Susan B. Anthony Center Director, Dr. Catherine Cerulli; and Tamara Leigh, Director of Operations and Public Relations for the Out Alliance.
But Mobley isn’t the only one who recognized DeAscentiis’ talent.
“I have never in my fifteen years as an educator taught a student like Lola,” said Sarah DeMulder, DeAscentiis’ eighth grade English teacher and mentor. DeMulder describes DeAscentiis the way you would try to explain a once in a lifetime cosmic event, pausing in an attempt to describe a unique occurrence just right.
“We were reading Edgar Allen Poe and we did a few of his prose pieces and a handful of poems,” said DeMulder. “Lola’s response to that was to go out and get an entire anthology of Poe’s work and dig through it. She’s just constantly wanting more.”
When faculty members at Mercy decided to plan a centennial celebration for the ratification of the 19th Amendment, DeAscentiis was immediately added to the committee.
“I felt like it was necessary to bring Lola on board,” said DeMulder. “Lola’s depth of knowledge on the subject matter supersedes any of our knowledge. She doesn’t just know about it. She lives it and believes in it.”
Linda Lopata, Director of Interpretation & Visitor Services at the Anthony Museum, agrees.
“She’s very unusual for her age,” Lopata said. “She’s thinking about things deeply but she’s also incredibly engaging.”
“When people are waiting for their tour and then she comes out, you can see in their face they’re kind of like ‘what is this?’” said Lopata. “But by the end, they’re like ‘she was phenomenal.’ And that’s not because she’s fifteen— it’s because she’s really, really good.”
Even at her young age, DeAscentiis is already inspiring young women and girls through her work at the Anthony Museum.
“Having [tours with] children is really fun,” DeAscentiis said of giving tours to little kids. “They take what they’ve learned in school and they’re actually so excited…I just love their energy.”
DeMulder’s two elementary school aged daughters both look up to Lola as a role model. “I asked my now eight-year-old what she would like to do to celebrate her eighth birthday and she wanted to go back to the Anthony Museum,” said DeMulder.
“Her email starts with ‘futureprez,’” Lopata said. “I don’t doubt it.”
In her time away from the Anthony Museum, DeAscentiis tries to keep herself busy. She’s currently on the editorial board of her school’s newspaper, participates in diversity club, and even started a TikTok account called HERstory focused on educating the public about women who were often overlooked or under-appreciated in history.
“It’s been a really great way to connect and reach out to people,” DeAscentiis says of the account, which has accumulated over three thousand likes on the platform.
Even though the Susan B. Anthony House is more than ten times older than she is, DeAscentiis finds Anthony’s life of service more powerful and relevant than ever.
“My favorite part of the tour to give is probably the very last room: her bedroom,” said DeAscentiis. “At that point people definitely start to tear up a little bit at the end of her story. That just means a lot to me because her story really was that moving and if I’m able to convey that in the hour I have with those people, it makes me feel pretty accomplished.”
“If I’m able to inspire people through her story, I think that’s a really great start at carrying on her legacy.”
This virtual tour is presented by Linda Lopata, Anthony Museum Director of Interpretation & Visitor Services. Her talk is titled, Suffragist Perspectives on Motherhood.
Got Rights! presented virtually to second graders. Closed group.
If you are interested in having this program presented to your second grade group, contact Programs 585.235.6124 Ext.1 or programs@susanbanthonyhouse.org
