One Afternoon in Seneca Falls: A day spent reflecting on battles won and battles left to go.

One Afternoon in Seneca Falls: A day spent reflecting on battles won and battles left to go.


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Happy 100, New York Suffrage
(Image: Marshall Hopkins)

A young boy pointed up above him to one of the hundreds of plaques adorning the walls. The small photo squeezed between type was of Ida B. Wells, best known for fighting to stop the lynching of African Americans and inducted to the Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls in 1988. The boy had already seen the museum, marveling at two separate globes that detailed what careers women could hold and what ones men could hold in the 19th Century — “but there’s less for girls,” he said — and his parents were showing him around the village of Seneca Falls, known for being the birthplace of women’s rights. Ida, his parents said, is his sister’s namesake; as is Ida Tarbell, honored in 2000 for her investigative journalism work. The young boy knew little of gender equality issues, still being at an age where the opposite gender doesn’t yet have “cooties.” His parents, of course, know a little more. Their parents know even more than that. There are some alive today who lived in an era where women’s rights were even more limited than they are today. And there are some who can say they lived when women weren’t even allowed to vote.

The year 2017 marks 100 years of women’s suffrage in New York, one of the first states to make the move behind a plethora of strong women and the men who stood behind them, using their leverage to vote it in. Every year Seneca Falls celebrates Convention Days, honoring the women who convened in 1848 to “discuss the social, civil and religious condition and rights of women.” This past weekend it celebrated not only that convention with a theme of “We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For,” but also the noteworthy accomplishment of voting, an occasion Tompkins County has acknowledged by declaring the calendar year the “Year of Women.” The three-day event highlighted with various sessions how far women have come, how far they have to go and what it will take for them to get there as highlighted by a keynote speech from HeForShe founder Elizabeth Nyamayaro, who encourages an inclusive fight for gender equality.
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How Far Women Have Come

Three years before the federal government ratified the 19th Amendment, giving some American women suffrage, the state of New York beat Congress to the punch. This year, celebrations are being held across the state to mark the 100 year anniversary of New York women being granted the right to vote. But the story of women’s suffrage didn’t start 100 years ago; it started much earlier.

The first Women’s Rights Convention was held right here in New York in Seneca Falls in July of 1848. A group of 300 individuals, men and women, came together to discuss the unequal social and political conditions that women were living in. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann M’Clintock, Jane Hunt and Martha Coffin Wright were the organizers of the convention. Each a writer, activist and organizer determined to fight for equal rights for women. Susan B. Anthony, another prominent suffragette, is often mistaken to have been involved with the Seneca Falls Convention, but it wasn’t until 1851 that she and Stanton met and began their work together.

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http://www.ithaca.com/news/one-afternoon-in-seneca-falls-a-day-spent-reflecting-on/article_9d786ac2-6c9e-11e7-a40c-43410ec884a0.html