Herstory - District and Regional

Come hear Sally Roesch Wagner, PhD
in St. Pete March 28!
There may also be a radio interview prior to the event - watch this space for further info.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

MARCH 28:  PRESENTATION BY SALLY ROESCH WAGNER, Ph. D.

“Meet Matilda Joslyn Gage”

Most Americans have at least a passing acquaintance with the names Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. However, most do not know of their far more radical colleague, Matilda Joslyn Gage, who, together with Stanton and Anthony, formed the driving force triumvirate behind the National Woman Suffrage Association more than a century ago. “...(t)he three names, Stanton, Anthony, and Gage...will ever hold a grateful place in the hearts of posterity,” predicted the Woman’s Tribune in 1888. But Gage’s name was all but lost following her death in 1898.  

Nationally recognized historian Dr. Sally Roesch (pronounced ‘rush’) Wagner, literary executor of the Gage papers and Executive Director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation (formed in 2000), brings Gage back to life with her expert presentations. “Gage challenged the oppression of women by church, state, family and capitalism at its most fundamental levels,” says Wagner. “Her vision of a world based on true liberty for all people speaks to us with surprising relevance today.”

Wagner’s pioneering credentials support that assertion. One of the first women in this country to earn a doctorate for work in women’s studies, Wagner was a founder of one of the nation’s first women’s studies programs.  She was a “talking head” on Ken Burns’ PBS documentary “Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton,” and wrote its accompanying faculty guide.  She was an historian in the PBS special “One Woman, One Vote” and has been interviewed a number of times on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and “Democracy Now.”

Wagner has authored numerous books, including a reissue for the modern reader of Gage’s 1893 magnum opus, “Woman, Church and State.”  Her monograph of Gage’s life, “Matilda Joslyn Gage: She Who Holds the Sky” tells of a radical suffragist who was also an abolitionist whose stately home served on the Underground Railroad, whose son-in-law was L. Frank Baum and that it was Gage who encouraged him to “write those [Oz] stories down.”  Wagner’s “Sisters in Spirit” illuminates the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) influence on early American feminists. 

Gage, adopted into the Wolf Clan of the Haudenosaunee nation the same year she was jailed for voting in a school board election, decried sex trafficking of women, exposed the fact that Catholic priests (and Protestant ministers as well) were sexually abusing children, warned of the danger of letting religion seep into government, and envisioned a true religion that would ‘set people free’ – all more than 100 years ago.

Recently, Gloria Steinem wrote that Gage was “...ahead of the women who were ahead of their time” and Ellie Smeal tagged Gage as “...the woman we need to know about today.”

Dr. Wagner’s presentation “Meet Matilda Joslyn Gage” is a Gage Foundation friend-raiser, and will include a brief video. The free event is at 2:00 PM, Saturday, March 28, at the St. Petersburg Unitarian-Universalist Church, 719 Arlington Avenue North at Mirror Lake. Q&A and light refreshments follow. Doors open at 1:30.   Door prizes, 50/50 raffle, bookstore, silent auction. No credit or debit cards. Free parking.  Registration is requested at http://www.matildajoslyngage.org or by phone at 315/637-9511.