Seneca Falls: back to the 19th century we go
On the day Roe v. Wade was overturned, I visited the site of the first women’s rights convention in the US
“My husband wouldn’t get out of the car,” she points to a hatchback idling across the street. “But I just had to come and get a picture with this statue.”
The statue, of suffrage activists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, is on the spot they met in 1851. Both were in town to attend an anti-slavery lecture,* and were introduced by Amelia Jenks Bloomer.**
The woman is wearing a purple T-shirt and purple fanny pack; the nail polish on her fingers and toes is lavender. She matches the purple and yellow flowers planted around the statue, the colors of the convention sash of the very first women’s rights convention in the US, which happened here in Seneca Falls on July 19 and 20, 1848.
Kicking off the American suffrage movement, the convention took place in the town’s Wesleyan Chapel. Where I’d just pulled up to when my friend got an alert on her phone. “The Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade,” she slowly read. I replied, perhaps not too eloquently but succinctly: “Shut the f — up.”
“This news,” the purple tee’d woman shakes her head. “I can’t believe it. I was here, protesting in the 70s, for these rights. I’ve been crying on and off all day.”
“Us too,” I say. We take her photo, remind each other to stay strong, and she gets back into her car.
When the news hit, I stumbled outside the chapel as my friend read more news headlines aloud. The sun was piercingly bright. I took a photo of a plaque, then wandered into the chapel in a daze. It was reconstructed in 2011, because no one had apparently thought to do so earlier. The structure had housed, among others, a roller skating rink, corporate offices, and a laundromat.
Statues of the 1848 convention players stand in the chapel: Stanton is there, as is Lucretia Mott, her sister Martha Coffin Wright, Jane Hunt, and Mary M’Clintock, all Quakers. Frederick Douglass is there too, towering above the women, with an expressive mane of hair; one of the few men at the convention.
The chapel is part of the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls. A nearby brick building hosts a museum, where a park ranger tells us that a tour is starting in a few minutes. Normally I’d join; I’m the person who rents every contraption in a museum that talks to me and gives me more more more details that I soak up and soak in. But not today. Instead, I drift through an exhibit that meanders from the convention into modern times.
I stand for a long time before a photo of a woman protesting in 1984. She holds a sign with big block letters: KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY BODY. Again, I think. Again and again and again. How naive I’ve been, to believe those who said that Roe would never be overturned, to feel secure about these rights. How tenuous they’ve been all along. And it doesn’t matter that I feel that we should be further along, that we shouldn’t again be in a place where, as Stanton wrote in 1848,
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.
It’s not just men who overturned Roe, of course. But the women who helped them also subscribe to the views that Stanton & Crew fought against nearly two centuries ago, that women should not have bodily autonomy or the same human rights that are afforded men. That’s chilling, horrifying, close-minded, and — of course — won’t stop abortion. Banning abortion never has, and never will stop abortion from happening. But it does make it less safe. And is just another reminder to women that some powerful people believe we should not have control over our own bodies or destinies.
A small shop down the street from the museum is adorned with a wide range of progressive signs, some handwritten and others that have clearly come from a dot-matrix printer. A screed on the front door announces that if you’ve recently sprayed yourself with fragrance, to please refrain from entering, “especially if it’s Axe Body Spray.” Since we are body spray-free, we head inside, where a woman with long gray hair parted in the middle tells us that she protested in the 70s for Roe v. Wade and “can’t believe this sh — .” She tells us to make sure and pop over into the nearby Woman Made shop.
But the shop is too bright: hot pink tees emblazoned with slogans like GIRLS RULE and WELL-BEHAVED WOMEN RARELY MAKE HISTORY hang besides coasters and tchotchkes featuring Ruth Bader Ginsberg. “Why didn’t she step aside,” I say to no one. “Why didn’t she let Obama make an appointment.” I’m irrationally angry at RGB even though it’s actually McConnell who’s the bad actor here; fully angry at the Republicans who did this, upset with the Democrats who let it happen as well as our bizarre political system where popular votes don’t count. I’m angry at so many people and things.
Angry at the injustice of it all because at the end of the day it’s women who will suffer, women who will die, women who will face economic hardship, women who will be beaten down by this system that is set up so that only powerful white men succeed. It’s not enough, these slogans.
CALL ME CRAZY, BUT I HOPE SOMEDAY WOMEN HAVE MORE RIGHTS THAN GUNS DO, a bright red t-shirt in the front window reads. I text a photo to some friends. Everyone is shocked, appalled, upset. What do we do?
I cross the canal and go into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. It’s in a former knitting factory, and the curator excitedly tells us many detailed details about the purchase of the building and its renovation. But when she brings us to an exhibit that lists hall of famers, the first date is 1973 — the year of Roe v. Wade — I start crying, silent tears that drip into my face mask. The curator points out the window: “You have to go see the spot where Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony met!”
I buy a pin shaped like a pennant that reads VOTES FOR WOMEN, a large Joy Harjo print, and a smaller Gloria Steinem one. I ask the checkout clerk for a lunch recommendation. Cafe 19, “you’ll love it!”
We do. Lots of purple in the decor, and coffee drinks that include the Lucretia Malt and the Underground. Some of the 1848 convention players worked with Harriet Tubman, and Seneca Falls was an important stop on the Underground Railroad.
Across from the cafe, there’s another statue, Ripples of Change, and its figures are larger than life: Harriet Tubman, Martha Coffin Wright, Sojourner Truth and Laura Cornelius Kellogg (Oneida). A Native American activist, Laura worked and spoke on behalf of the Oneida and Haudenosaunee people, whose clans were matriarchal societies where women were leaders and Clan Mothers held the highest authority.
I put my hand into Kellogg’s. I close my eyes. We stand together for a while in stillness and silence. Her bronze hand is blazing hot from the sun.
*Neither of these gals would go on to have stellar anti-racist futures. Though they formed a group with Frederick Douglass in 1866 with the goal of winning voting rights for both women and Black Americans, Anthony and Stanton would eventually join a faction that argued against the 15th amendment (which gave Black men the right to vote post-Civil War). They wanted to keep the focus on getting white women the right to vote, and isn’t that just a crystal clear example of how white supremacy doesn’t want anyone getting a piece of its power pie but instead pits us all against each other so that we’re fighting each other instead of dismantling the systems that are keeping us all down.
** Yes, those bloomers, aka super loose pants that bunched at the ankle and ostensibly gave gals a bit more freedom of movement. Amelia didn’t invent these, but she did popularize them.
