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The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women’s Rights
- Date: Tuesday, March 30, 2021
- Time: 12:00 pm
- Location: Online
From the perspective of three friends and neighbors in mid-19th-century Auburn, NY—the “agitators” of the title—Dorothy Wickenden tells the fascinating stories of abolition, the Underground Railroad, the early women’s rights movement, and the Civil War. Harriet Tubman, one of the most important conductors on the Underground Railroad, hid the enslaved men, women, and children she rescued in the basement kitchens of her friends, Martha Wright and Frances Seward. Martha Wright was a Quaker mother of seven and organizer of women’s rights and abolitionist conventions with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Frances Seward—the wife of Governor, then Senator, then Secretary of State William H. Seward—gave freedom-seekers money and referrals and aided in their education, while arguing strenuously with her husband about the urgency of immediate abolition.
Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote and programs presented in conjunction with the exhibit are made possible in part by the National Archives Foundation through the generous support of Unilever, Pivotal Ventures, Carl M. Freeman Foundation in honor of Virginia Allen Freeman, AARP, AT&T, Ford Motor Company Fund, Facebook, Barbara Lee Family Foundation Fund at the Boston Foundation, Google, HISTORY ®, and Jacqueline B. Mars. Additional support for National Outreach and Programs provided by Denise Gwyn Ferguson, Maggie and Robert Boroujerdi, BMO Financial Group, The Hearst Foundations, Maris S. Cuneo Foundation, FedEx, Bernstein Family Foundation, and The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation/Ambassador Fay-Hartog Levin (Ret.).
