IIE PACE Podcast: Episode 2
IIE PACE Podcast: Episode 2
Always Progressing
Guest Speaker: Deborah Hughes (She/Her)
Recording Date: March 27th, 2024
[Announcer]
We acknowledge with respect the Seneca Nation known as the Great Hill People and keepers of the western door of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. We take this opportunity to thank the people on whose ancestral lands The University of Rochester currently resides in Rochester, New York. To learn more about ancestral lands. Upon which we live and work, please check out native-land.ca.
[Dennis Carr]
Well, thank you, Deborah Hughes, for joining us for this podcast today. This is a podcast of the Institute for Innovative Education here at the U of R, which includes the Edward G. Minor Library. And this is our diversity, equity and inclusion committee, and we're hosting these podcasts as an educational arm of that committee. Deborah Hughes is the president and CEO of the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House, holding this position since 2007. During her tenure as president The Anthony Museum has completed a major phase of restoration to the National Historic Landmark. Secured its absolute charter as a museum and dramatically grown attendance while staying true to its mission and vision. Deborah Hughes has spearheaded innovative programming and events such as the award winning Votilla. Deborah, unfortunately, that Votilla was cut short by the pandemic. Maybe we'll get to do that again someday. What's the plan on that?
[Deborah Hughes]
Well, actually, Votilla did happen that was the one where we floated five packet boats from Seneca Falls on the canal back to Rochester and 2017 in honor of New York State's separate centennial
[Dennis Carr]
Right.
[Deborah Hughes]
The big event that we were planning with lots of partners was called Voter Cade for the summer of 2020 is the one that we had to cancel because of the pandemic.
[Dennis Carr]
There we go.
[Deborah Hughes]
I hope we're going to restore something like that, but we haven't gotten back to that yet.
[Dennis Carr]
Yeah, yeah. To start with, how do you come to this role at Susan B. Anthony House. How do you…what drew you to representing Susan B. Anthony's legacy and your role there at the Susan B. Anthony House?
[Deborah Hughes]
It was kind of sideways that I came to this. I had... I'm an ordained American Baptist minister. And I had served churches in the Baptist denomination and worked for the denomination out of New York City. And I've also served Presbyterian churches. And I was in an interim position at Burke Presbyterian Church. And a friend said, Deborah, I want to send you this job description. It sounds like you to me and I thought that that was just a really crazy idea And I read the job description and I applied. And that was 17 years ago.
[Dennis Carr]
Wonderful. The whole idea of public history and the world of museums I think I think it intersects with social justice issues and community issues and What's your vision for the Susan B. Anthony House and how the museum part of that illustrates and illuminates the legacy of Susan B. Anthony and these greater issues.
[Deborah Hughes]
Yeah, that's exactly what drew me here. And in 2007, when I started, the other thing that really drew me was the connection that the house, which it was the Susan B. Anthony house at that time now we're the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and house. Had such a great connection in the neighborhood and a tradition of trying to be neighbors with integrity in ways that or how Susan would have interacted with the folks here when she lived here. We say that Susan B. Anthony inspires us from a quote that she gave a few years before she died and they were sitting around talking about you know what happens eventually and she said “Well, when I when I go let there be no tears. Just pass by and get on with the work.” So that's our understanding of the mission. That what we're supposed to be doing is getting on with the work. And the challenge for the board and for the staff is to figure out what we think that work is. We really believe that Susan B. Anthony at her heart was a humanitarian. Who had this vision for democracy that if we really could achieve a government that was of, by, and for all the people that would have the best possible outcomes in terms of creating a government that served the needs of people and allowed resources to be pooled. And the vote, which is what she's probably most famous for was a means to that end. And what we find is that Susan B. Anthony and things she talked about, the things she wrote about her causes. I wish they were less relevant than they are today, but they're still very relevant. So, we really understand our role be inspiring people to keep being change makers to get on with the work. And that's what gives us our passion and our energy every day.
[Dennis Carr]
Considering Susan B. Anthony's role in voting rights for women and the continued tradition of people in Rochester visiting Mount Hope and putting their stickers on her grave marker, how do you continue to encourage women voters to go to the polls?
[Deborah Hughes]
Susan B. Anthony believed that the vote was probably the most powerful weapon in the world when you can achieve change by getting people to change their hearts and their ethics and exercise their vote, you really accomplished a revolution. But a lot of change in society has been accomplished through violence or through power or through manipulation or through lying and cheating and all kinds of other means it's kind of a- That's a human story that goes on for eons. One of the things that we think is one of the great dangers of our time is apathy. Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass had a phrase they used all the time, which was to get up in agitation. And the point to an agitation was if you If you believed in something, but you were sitting around not getting engaged in helping to make the change you thought should happen. You needed to get a little bit agitated. To get connected so Susan had a phrase. She said, we need to organize, educate, and agitate. And that pretty much encompasses what the museum is trying to do, educate people about the history. Bring insight into the connection of issues that are still important. Help people think about ways that Anthony and others have organized or maybe be inspired to go back and organize locally. And then providing that agitation. That thing that says, hey, this isn't just something we're talking about-removed from it. This is something that we're actually living through, so what can you do?
[Dennis Carr]
From the standpoint of someone who, myself, who spent all day on election day in 2016 and then again in 2020. It was a wonderful thing to experience, you know. People came no matter how they planned to vote they were. You know, they were they were happy to be there. They felt something. And I think that's one of the… maybe that's one of the really valuable things about Susan B. Anthony's legacy. Is no matter where people seem to fall politically, they can find something relevant in Susan B. Anthony's legacy. What do you think about that?
[Deborah Hughes]
Yes, I think that's really fascinating. We know that people come here to visit us, often they're projecting a lot onto Susan B. Anthony, and we don't know what it is. People of very differing political opinions have found her to be a hero or a role model in different ways. And it's what you're expressing does there's something that connects people with the past and with the present It seems to be a really hopeful connection and a courageous connection and a connection of thanksgiving or gratefulness. We see people tear up or say they get goosebumps all the time. I don't necessarily know exactly where they're connecting with the story. They kind of come with that. And sometimes they tell us. The air in the air at the gravesite in 2016. I have never… felt that kind of energy. It was a spectacular fall day. The colors were vibrant. It was fresh. But the people would wait in line for hours and nobody was pushy or self-centered. That's what amazed me when people would get up to the to the tombstone to take their selfies nobody said just take one or you know there was no rushing no pushing. People were so kind and gentle with each other, and I guess that it was almost like Susan was bringing out the best in them.
[Dennis Carr]
I like that. I don't know whether you know that or not, but at Mount Hope, we had a pretty good countdown and there were almost 12,000 people came that day. We expected 400 or 500. Almost 12,000 people turned out on the 2016 election. And probably including the days that coming up for the election and election day in 2020, we probably had pretty close to that again, so people still feel something public history, I think, is very powerful in that it connects people to these historical figures but it really doesn't mean anything unless it's relevant to the current day. And I don't think there's anybody in anybody who's lived in Rochester who isn't more relevant than Susan B. Anthony. And This is a dangerous question. And you can refuse to answer it. Given the train wreck of a political environment we live in, how do you think she would navigate that today?
[Deborah Hughes]
You know the 19th century was a train wreck. It saw huge gains. You know, Susan B. Anthony was one of those who believed that the Civil War was absolutely about ending slavery. She when people would say well what's the war about you know there are all kinds of…She was very, very clear in her statement. She once said that when the first negro…and this would be how she would have phrased it…was kidnapped from the shores of Africa and put into shackles and brought to this country we started the war and we've been founded on war. And she believed the civil war was the war to end that. But in her generation, there were congresspeople knocking one another over the head. There's a fellow who got a concussion from the cane of another Congress member, there was a push to put Jesus literally into the United States Constitution that got pretty far along in this legislature. She worked with some people on issues that really betrayed who were not so invested in equality, but we're invested in inequality and as far as it let them get ahead with what they wanted to achieve. She saw New York State improve its laws for married women. And then she saw New York State go backwards in its laws. She saw women getting more access to health care and childbirth being less of a life-threatening occurrence for some. And then she saw the Comstock Laws that came in that said women couldn't even read about contraception because it was obscene and that was banned. So, I think that Susan couldn't be surprised by any shenanigans. I think that she would be alert and alarmed. I think she mostly would say we need to get out of our chairs and go vote. Because we're responsible for the outcomes. And we're responsible for translating what's in our hearts into what government is doing.
[Dennis Carr]
I always think of If she were here today, she could have been a she could have been the CEO of a large corporation. She could have been a military general. She was such a great strategist and tactician. And I think that's the way she managed the women's movement in her day. Towards the end of her life, she gave this speech where she's frequently quoted where she said, failure is impossible and uh…first of all first of all what do you think the context of that was? And how do we apply that today?
[Deborah Hughes]
Well, there's a little bit of a scholarly debate about whether she actually said it. But the evidence is really clear that shortly after she gave the speech. It was public information that she'd said it. So, whether she said it or not, it's certainly Susan B. Anthony who's gotten the credit for it. And the way the story goes, she was in Baltimore, and it was spring when they would usually welcome the new Congress by introducing a proposed amendment to give women the right to vote. And Susan was accustomed that she would use her birthday gatherings as a way to raise money for the cause. What was different was it was 1906. She was 86 years old. She was planning to go out to the West Coast, to Oregon and Washington in the coming months to be advocating for the cause and they had this very large gathering. And I like the way that Anna Howard Shaw reported about it because she said that when Susan came in they gave her a standing ovation with the Chautauqua salute, waving white handkerchiefs rather than applause. And she said, though Susan B. Anthony never did any of her work for her own ego or for own sake. She said she was sure it did the old heart good to see people who appreciate her because you know she spent years being run out of town and having her life threatened, being threatened They would use anything they could to discredit her. She's too tall, she's too manly. She’s too oud. She's not marriageable, whatever. And sometimes it really did come down to threatening very life. And so, here's Anna Howard Shaw saying it probably did the old girl good to have all those people applauding her in that way kind of like what we were saying about the cemetery. She had fluid in a lung and there were no antibiotics at that point in time and she was in her 80s. She was apparently so ill and she's looking at all this crowd and she reflects that she has outlived so many of the early pioneers. Soujourner Truth and Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and so many others. And it's that point that she looks at the crowd and acknowledges she won't live long enough to see it. But with a cause in the hands of those “such as these,” meaning the people who are now taking on the leadership of the movement, “Failure is impossible.” So that was the idea. She's passing the torch and she is the general leading the troops and saying, “keep on the battle.”
[Dennis Carr]
Do you think that in today's environment, we can still say that failure is impossible?
[Deborah Hughes]
You know, Susan was once asked by a reporter how she handles all the defeats you know she have a there'd be a vote in Kansas and Still, they wouldn't vote for women to get the right to vote. Next time, there'd be another vote and it would be a few more, but they'd still lose. And the reporter gives that example. It says, you just always lose. How do you handle all those defeats? And her comment at the time was, well. Defeats? There are none. We are always progressing. And I think for her, that statement is more about the changing of the hearts and minds. She never believed that you could legislate morality. Just abolishing slavery wouldn't mean that human beings would treat each other with respect and dignity. She was in support of legislation to protect people, but I think I As shocked as we are about some of the vision in our country. It was always there, and you can't cure it if you don't know that it exists. So, I think Susan one would be clear to call out the things that she feels are not in the best interest of humanity, particularly around, as you know, that Anthony gravesite, there's that pillar that has liberty, equality, justice, and humanity all around it. We think those are the core family values. But I think she also would say, you know, now that we've seen some of the issues, what are we going to do? To work to correct it. And to keep progressing.
[Dennis Carr]
Both of my grandmothers were in their very late teens when the 19th Amendment was ratified. So, it really wasn’t that long ago. And I know my own experience at Mount Hope when we're talking about Susan B. Anthony. You see the light bulb go off with everyone from elementary school students to senior citizens that… Yeah, this was a big deal. And yeah, it isn't that long ago. I'm sure that at the museum, you probably have members who at least if they don't remember it themselves, they remember their mothers…experiencing this stuff. So, it is pretty amazing. The 19th Amendment, ratified by the Congress in 1919 and then a number of states had ratified it in 1920.Do you remember the story about Tennessee ratifying the amendment?
[Deborah Hughes]
Yes, absolutely. Harry T. Burn. It's a wonderful story. Harry T. Burn was in the he was a young man in the Tennessee legislature.
[Dennis Carr]
24 years old.
[Deborah Hughes]
Is that right? Okay. Thank you, Dennis. Yeah. And his mother was the head of the Grange. And she had written to him, nobody knew quite where he stood on the issue of the 19th Amendment. And they really needed one more state to pass it. So, it was going to get through or not get through. And the story goes that she wrote to him and said, help Mrs. Kat….Carrie Chapman Catt was chair of the movement then…uh “put the rat in ratification.” And there's some good videos about you know dramatizations of that. The issue wasn't actually the vote on ratifying the 19th Amendment. The vote was whether to let it come out of committee. They knew they had enough votes on the legislature floor to let it pass, but the committee was preventing it from getting and the first time it came up to vote, Harry voted no. And the second time it came up to vote, he voted no. And the third time it came up to vote. He changed his vote and voted yes. And so by bringing it out of committee, that meant that it was going to pass the Tennessee legislature. He then, if you can imagine, I would love to see a great dramatization of it. The story says that the legislature got all in control. People came running after him. He escaped out a window. He had to hire bodyguards. And his life was threatened for having dared to do this this vote and people like to credit his mother for encouraging him to put the rat in ratification. He actually came here and visited the Susan B. Anthony house in the 1950s.
[Dennis Carr]
Wow. I know the letter his mother wrote him. The line that forced the issue for him. She said, don't forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Kat. I know if I got a letter like that from my mother, I would vote for what she told me to vote for. So, a pretty amazing story. So, it wasn't really a sure thing.
[Deborah Hughes]
Oh, absolutely not.
[Dennis Carr]
For women to get the vote. So pretty amazing. We here at the U of R Medical Center, we're working in health care. And we know that there have been and maybe still persist disparities for women in health care disparities for women in the health professions. And… You know, encouragingly there are more women in the medical school as students right now than men.
[Deborah Hughes]
Interesting.
[Dennis Carr]
What are your thoughts on those disparities and maybe what we can do about it?
[Deborah Hughes]
Yeah, you know, the um The Declaration of Independence really outlines those inalienable rights. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and the 14th amendment as well. And then there's some rights that we choose to limit. So, we give property to the government through our taxes so the government can do good stuff for us. And I think that is the point to government, to protect people and to do things you couldn't do alone. And I think that's the big question that we keep having. What shared resources do we need? And personally, I think healthcare education, arts and culture, and infrastructure all kinds of things that provide clean water, clean air. These are the things government should be about. And I think the struggle all along is how much are we willing to sacrifice. Our own personal wealth or property. In order to make sure that everyone can share in those riches.
[Dennis Carr]
Yeah. If I've learned anything from my time at Mount Hope Cemetery. It's that no matter how bad things get at any point along the line. The trajectory is always upward and better along the way. And sometimes it's hard to remember that but as I see the history of this country and this community over the last 200 years. We just get marginally better all the time. And let's hope that it continues like that. I think Susan B. Anthony was very optimistic. Spent 50 years or more pushing for this and didn't live to see it happen. But she knew what would happen. Is there anything else that you'd like to leave us with? Concerning Susan B. Anthony. Women's position in society and the whole idea of social justice around this.
[Deborah Hughes]
You know, Dennis, I used to do some work around hurricane relief. For example, going down to New Orleans when I was working with Third Presbyterian Church. And when you go into a circumstance where people have lost everything literally you know the whole house floated away and maybe they lost a neighbor, and they lost a pet. And they lost all the pictures and all the treasures. What is amazing is to see that people don't lose their compassion. They don't lose their resilience. They don't lose their gratefulness. It almost brings everything so clear to them and there is something in the human spirit that I think we just have to keep lifting up as Susan B. Anthony did. We have to combat some of the things that that aren't so good, but we need to lift up for one another. And I think that that is it's a universal truth. You know, people…when we have second graders come here And they are learning about Susan B. Anthony. We start out by with our Change It Program of asking them, what do you do if you see something that's not right? And a seven-year-old doesn't really understand time. They don't understand that Susan B. Anthony lived a century ago, but boy, do they understand justice and compassion. And they are so good at saying so Well, you should fix it if it's not right. And we have second graders who will want to fix everything from getting guns off the street to preventing addiction to making sure everybody has a roof over their head to changing the menu so there's more pizza at school. And I think, I guess I think that what we're doing as educators, what we're trying to do at the museum is help people find that really best self about other people and believe in that. And like you said, I do think the evidence of good out far outweighs the evidence of the other stuff. But boy, that other stuff is persistent.
[Dennis Carr]
Yeah, I frequently ask particularly students that come to the cemetery at the end, I ask them, why do we do this? Why do we care about what happened before? And they give me some pretty good answers. And my answer to that is. You know and I ask them, are there things you want to change or are there things you want to preserve? And they all shake their head yes. And I said, well, it's going to be difficult to make an argument If you don't know how it got that way, you don't know the history of it. And I think that's the value of public history sites like the like the museum- The Susan B. Anthony Museum and Mount Hope and other places around town. That we give them that ammunition. To make those changes or preserve some good things that they might like to hold on to. One of the things that we ask, we like to ask speakers is, can you recommend a book, or a film related to this stuff? That really speaks to you, and you think that people should read something that might be you know. That might be top shelf of reading or viewing along these lines.
[Deborah Hughes]
I think the best movie or video If it was made in the 1990s and it's got Hillary Swank in it and it's actually a movie about what happened in Tennessee at the end of the movement, and it's called Iron Jawed Angels. It's a dramatization. It's a really If you've got the DVD or the rental to watch the thing afterwards that tells you which things were accurate, which things weren't. But it's a great eye opener to what was happening when the 19th Amendment was just being past. In terms of books, I thought about this…you had asked me this. And I always have a favorite book. It's usually one of the last ones that I that I read. Well, a really good fiction book that doesn't have anything to do with suffrage but has a whole lot to do with the human condition is A Fine Balance. It's by a Rohinton Mystery. It's a book set in India. In the 20th century. And it's an incredible story. About the human condition. So, I would recommend that to people. I think one of the best books about Susan B. Anthony is the one that Lynn Sherr wrote. Lynn Sherr wrote Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words: Failure is Impossible. It came out in the 1990s and it's not written like a chronology. It's chapters by different topics. Lynn's research is impeccable. And I think she really captures Anthony's spirit. And that's a good book.
[Dennis Carr]
50% of the population. It's amazing that things happen so slowly. I'm glad we're… I’m glad we've made that progress and, you know, by the time we have the awareness to ask these questions, people like our grandmothers are gone. And I often wonder what my grandmothers would have thought about this. And I have a pretty good suspicion that they would have thought that if women didn't have the vote was the most ridiculous thing on the face of the earth. I come from a family of women who did professional jobs and, you know, contributed along the way. So, I have a pretty good idea what they would have thought of all of this. And… I think that's the value of public history. It explains and illuminates a lot of these questions that we no longer can ask our ancestors or even our grandmothers about. Thank you for participating in this podcast of our IDEAL committee. And I'm sure that you and I will cross paths many times going forward. Thanks for coming today.
[Deborah Hughes]
Thanks, Dennis. I look forward to crossing paths with you, as always.
[Dennis Carr]
Thank you.