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“Women Voted in NY – Before Columbus” with Sally Roesch Wagner, Sponsored by New York Council for the Humanities
May 1, 2016 @ 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
This lecture kicks off a season of Ulster County Historical Society lectures and events with the theme of “Celebrating Women in History,” to commemorate the 2017 centennial of woman suffrage in New York State.
Centuries before the 19th Amendment allowed the American female the right to vote in 1920, women of the Six Nation Iroquois Confederacy (the Haudenosaunee) enjoyed an egalitarian, gender-balanced society and possessed the unprecedented responsibility of selecting their male leaders. Furthermore, they could remove from office anyone who didn’t make wise decisions for the future, or could prevent a man from becoming Chief if he had violated a woman.
When European-immigrant women in New York State began to organize for their rights in 1848, they took their cue from the nearby Haudenosaunee communities, where women lived in this advanced world. Amazingly, despite the nations’ subsequent assimilation into American life, Haudenosaunee women still maintain much of this authority today.
Admission is free to this lecture, thanks to sponsorship by the New York Council for the Humanities, through the Public Scholars Program. Ms. Wagner will have copies of her book Sisters in Spirit (Native Voices, 2001) for sale at this event.
Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner is the author of numerous women’s history books and articles. She wrote the faculty guide for Not for Ourselves Alone, Ken Burns’ documentary on Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and appeared in that film and other PBS women’s history programs. Her publications range in topic from pioneer women to suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage. Awarded one of the first doctorates in the country for work in women’s studies (UC Santa Cruz) and a founder of one of the first college-level women’s studies programs in the United States (CSU Sacramento), Dr. Wagner currently serves as an adjunct faculty member in the Honors Program at Syracuse University.