History of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Awards Luncheon

 

The origin of the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Awards Luncheon lies in the 2001-2002 Tenth Anniversary Year of Celebration for the UofL Women’s Center. During that celebration,  the  Center hosted a kick-off luncheon with a keynote; and invited university staff and faculty to attend the event, bringing a younger woman as a guest. This model was so successful, that the Center repeated it at the conclusion of the Anniversary Year with a gala dinner honoring UofL’s “founding mothers” whose vision gave birth to the Commission on the Status of Women; the Women’s and Gender Studies Department; and the  Women’s Center.

 

At the conclusion of the 10^th Anniversary year, the Women’s Center continued to honor the university’s “founding mothers” with a shared meal and keynote speaker. However, we needed to moved the event into the fall semester and  designed an annual celebration of  the November 12 birthday of Suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. At that time, the Center also inaugurated two  awards: the Mary K. Bonsteel-Tachau Gender Equity Award and the M. Celeste Nichols Professional Development Award.  Both are named for women who were trailblazers at the University of Louisville.

 

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the daughter of Daniel and Mary Livingston Cady, was born in Johnstown, New York, on November 12^th 1815. She married Henry Brewster Stanton in 1840.  After their marriage, Elizabeth and Henry became active members of the African American Anti-Slavery Society, and traveled to London as delegates to the World Anti-Slavery Convention. In London, Elizabeth Cady Stanton met convention delegate, Lucretia Mott. Both women became furious when, as female delegates, they were refused the right to speak on the convention floor. Stanton later recalled: "We resolved to hold a convention as soon as we returned home, and form a society to advocate the rights of women."  This became the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY, one of the first steps in women’s long road to suffrage.

 

This years keynote speaker is: 

Lynn Niedermeier

Lynn Niedermeier is a native of Kansas City, but grew up in Toronto, Ontario.  She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario and a law degree from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.  After practicing law for several years in Canada, she returned to her first love and obtained a master’s degree in history with an emphasis in historic preservation from Middle Tennessee State University.  She is employed as anassistant in Library Special Collections at Western Kentucky University, where she has written many articles on local and University history.  She is the author of two books: “That Mighty Band of Maidens”: A History of Potter College for Young Ladies, Bowling Green, Kentucky; and Eliza Calvert Hall: Kentucky Author and Suffragist.

   

Past Women’s Center Keynotes:

November 8th 2007:  Nora Bredes: "You are Susan B. Anthony: How the Dream Lives On"

Nora Bredes  is director of the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women’s Leadership at the University of Rochester. The Center celebrates women’s achievements and analyzes barriers to their progress. The Center also conducts biennial surveys of the number of women serving in New York’s local governments and sponsors the Women Leading Local Governments Initiative, an effort that links women elected to New York’s city and county governments to each other and to public policy experts and resources.   

Ms. Bredes came to the Anthony Center in 1999, after more than twenty years working in government and not-for-profit organizations. She served as a Suffolk County (NY) legislator from 1992-1998. Her legislative accomplishments include winning passage of one of the nation’s most comprehensive anti-tobacco measures, improving protections for victims of domestic violence and successfully sponsoring the Greenways Bond Act, a measure that secured $62 million to preserve Suffolk's open space, parks and farmlands.  

In 1996 Ms. Bredes was a candidate for U.S. Congress in a targeted race. Though she lost the campaign, she won endorsements from public safety organizations, gun control groups, the Sierra Club, major women’s organizations and two of the NY-metropolitan area’s major newspapers, Newsday and the New York Times. In its endorsement, the Times wrote: “ . . . Nora Bredes (is) a reform-minded member of the Suffolk County Legislature who has proved a tenacious and effective advocate for the causes she pursues.” (NYT Editorial Desk, 10/29/96.) 

Before becoming a legislator, Bredes directed the statewide environmental group, the NY League of Conservation Voters and, from 1980-1989, led the Shoreham Opponents Coalition in a successful effort to prevent operation of the Long Island Lighting Company’s Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant. The grassroots campaign against the nuclear plant eventually won support from a majority of Long Island’s citizens and elected officials. In 1987, NYS Governor Cuomo appointed Ms. Bredes as a founding trustee of the Long Island Power Authority, a state authority created to stop Shoreham and operate the Lighting Company as a public power company.  

Ms. Bredes has appeared on CNN, PBS, CBS Sunday Morning, ABC News and local television and radio programs. She has been featured in Good Housekeeping Magazine, New York Woman, Newsday, and the New York Times.  Her commentaries on politics and public policy appear occasionally in Newsday and Rochester’s Democrat and Chronicle. 

Her career has earned her recognition and honors, including: Champion for Public Health (1995/1998, American Cancer Society); Woman of the Year in Government (1995, Times-Beacon Newspapers); Environmentalist of the Year (1994, LI Sierra Club); NYS Environmentalist of the Year (Environmental Advocates, 1986) and, one of ten National Grassroots Hero named by Mother Jones Magazine in 1990.  

Ms. Bredes earned a bachelor’s degree at Cornell University and completed graduate work at Columbia University. She lives in Pittsford, New York with her husband and their three sons.

 

November 2006: Wanda A. Hendricks: "Political Equals and Contested Spaces: Race and the Suffrage Movement."

Dr. Hendricks is Associate Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. Her publications include the book Gender, Race, and Politics in the Midwest: Black Club Women in Illinois (Indiana University Press,1998), numerous essays and articles. She is one of the Sr. Editors of Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia (2nd ed. Oxford, 2004). Her current project is a biography of late 19th and early 20th century social reformer and club woman Fannie Barrier Williams. She serves as a member of the Executive Council of the Southern Association for Women Historians, a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians (OAH) and member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Illinois History. She has also chaired the Committee on the Status of African American, Latino, Asian American, and Native American (ALANA) Historians and ALANA History for the Organization of American Historians. 

 

 

November 2005: Linda Lumsden: “Inez Millholland”

Linda Lumsden is an associate professor at Western Kentucky University in the School of Journalism and Broadcasting, where she teaches journalism and women’s studies.  Her most recent book, Inez: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland, is the definitive biography of suffragist Inez Milholland, a contemporary of Alice Paul. The most famous images of Millholland are those in which she is mounted on a white horse, wearing a crown and cape at the head of the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, DC.  Milholland was recently portrayed in the HBO film Iron Jawed Angels.  Dr. Lumsden holds degrees from Central Connecticut State University, Syracuse University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  She has done freelance work for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press. Inez: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland is Dr. Lumsden’s second book about the suffrage movement.

 

November 2004: Lucy Beard “Alice Paul”

Lucy Beard is the Program Director for the Alice Paul Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public about the life and work of Alice Paul. She holds degrees from The George Washington University and Rutgers University. 

March 2003: Naomi Wolf: “The Changemakers: Ethical Leadership and the New Female Power”

An author, feminist, social critic, Naomi Wolf is also founder of the Woodhull Institute, a not-for-profit, non-partisan, non-sectarian educational organization that provides ethical leadership training and professional development for women. A San Francisco native, Wolf graduated from Yale and did her graduate work at New College, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. She served as a consultant to the Gore 2000 presidential campaign; was a Glamour Magazine woman of the year; and has been named by Time Magazine as one of the 50 most notable leaders under age 40. Wolf was also named to the Elle 25, a list of important people on the cultural landscape. A prolific writer, Ms. Wolf’s essays have appeared in The New Republic, Wall Street Journal, Glamour, Ms., Esquire, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. She is also the author of four books: The Beauty Myth (1992); Fire with Fire: The New Female Power (1993); Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood (1997); Misconceptions: Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood (2001).

  

 November 2003: Coline Jenkins: “The Elizabeth Cady Stanton Trust”

The great, great granddaughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Coline Jenkins is an accomplished author and a television producer. Through the years, she has chosen to use her talents to inspire both awareness and pride in women's history. Along with Louisvillian Marsha Weinstein, she founded the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Trust, a collection of suffrage memorabilia. Ms. Jenkins is a resident of Old Greenwich, CT. She co-authored a book, 33 Things Every Girl Should Know About Women's History and produced the television documentary "An American Revolution: Women Take Their Place,” and “Elizabeth Winthrop: All the Days of Her Life,” a look at the contributions women settlers made in colonial America, despite the strict social pressures of the time. Jenkins comes from a long line of women activists. In addition to her great, great grandmother, her great grandmother, Harriot Stanton Blatch, also worked for suffrage during the so-called Militant Period (1913-1915).

 

 

March 2002: Melissa Thronton: “Whistling Girls and Crowing Hens”

 Ms. Thornton is a young (just turned 30!) woman, Louisville native, and graduate of Male High School, where she was granted a Porter Scholarship. Currently working in public relations for Lincoln Center in New York, she was Director of Women’s Outreach for U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's historic 2000 campaign. Ms. Thornton worked as New York City Planned Parenthood’s Manager of Government Relations. She is on the board of the Third Wave Foundation, a national activist and philanthropic organization created for women between the ages of 15-30.  Her parents, The Reverend George Thornton, pastor of St. Jude Baptist Church, and Mary Thornton, live here in Louisville. She was profiled in The Courier-Journal on 1/1/01.