According to a Washington Post report in the early years of the American republic over 1,700 Congressional representatives, Senators and Congressmen owned enslaved people. Despite a very clear conflict of interest they voted on the laws governing the country and the enslaved population. Some Representatives served in Congress long after slavery was finally abolished in New York State.
Five of the first seven U.S. Presidents were definitely slaveholders and at least five other later Presidents had family connections to slavery. Five of the Supreme Court Justices who ruled that African Americans had no citizenship rights under the Constitution in the 1857 Dred Scott decision were slaveholders. [Read more…] about Slave-holding New York State Congressional Representatives: A Complete List
Women’s Rights National Historical Park has announced the digital availability of a set of personal and business papers held by the Jane and Richard Hunt family.
Bill Greer’s new book A Dirty Year: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in Gilded Age New York (Chicago Review Press, 2020) looks back to a time of rigged elections, everyday shootings, and attacks on the press, to sexual impropriety, reproductive rights, and the chasm between rich and poor.
In recognition of 2020 and the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, Women’s Rights National Historical Park has invited the public to participate in a virtual transcribe-a-thon through the Library of Congress to help build their available sources of research.
The March 2020 episode of “Crossroads of Rockland History” focused on the #MonumentalWomen Project.
The Monumental Women’s Statue Fund announced a redesigned statue to honor pioneering women’s rights advocates – the first statue depicting real women in the 165-year history of New York City’s Central Park.