Frederick Douglass statue in Rochester, NY

Frederick Douglass

The Frederick Douglass statue in Rochester, NY’s Highland Park celebrates one of my hometown’s two greatest civil rights luminaries. The other is Susan B. Anthony

Great American Women of Susan B.’s Era

Susan LaFlesche Picotte

During Women’s History Month we will use this space to celebrate several great American women who were comrades of Susan B. Anthony. (Click here for an earlier blog post on Women’s History Month.) Though Miss Anthony did not know all of them, each one came from her era and worked to make us a more […]

Susan B. Anthony’s Brother Worked near Frederick Douglass

five-story building front and side

Correction: The Anthonys worked in the Reynolds Arcade, across the street from this building. Frederick Douglass had his office in the Talman Building. Sorry for the confusion. This is the Talman Building in Rochester, NY, where Susan B. Anthony’s brother and father ran an insurance business. The brother will be the focus of my talk […]

Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass association recounted in new biography

let's have tea

Susan B. Anthony And Justice For All is out in its new edition and explores her long-term association with Frederick Douglass. (Click here to order on Amazon.)This monument, titled “Let’s Have Tea,” depicts two of the main characters in the book. A Multifaceted Friendship Susan and Frederick were neighbors when both moved to Rochester in […]

Was Emily Dickinson as miserable as film suggests?

Susan B Anthony family

The film A Quiet Passion did not serve up the Emily Dickinson I know. Having read some biographies of Dickinson as well as her poetry, I have to say that the movie seemed pretty one-sided in portraying her life as one of angst and frustration.

Clarina Nichols: A Woman Alone

Woman in high-necked dress with long curls

Clarina Nichols was a woman alone for most of her life. And some of the time she was married, she was miserable. Like D.R. Anthony, Nichols emigrated to Kansas in 1854 with one of the earliest parties of the Emigrant Aid Company. By the time she set foot in Kansas, D.R. had returned east to […]

The Lady Who Made This Big War

Susan B Anthony family

That is how Abraham Lincoln is said to have greeted Harriet Beecher Stowe when he met her many years after the publication of her shocking 1852 bestseller Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which gave slavery a face and a heart by telling it through the eyes of individuals. Read about Harriet, her book and its amazing success by clicking here.Even […]