By Lorna Oppedisano | Photography by Alice G. Patterson<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Teacher, activist, leading feminist studies expert and Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation founder and executive director Sally Roesch Wagner has some sage advice.<\/p>\n \u201cDo not fall in love with a dead woman,\u201d she said with a thoughtful chuckle. \u201cYou\u2019ll end up stalking her for the rest of your life. Yeah, OK, I could be considered a serious scholar, or I could be considered somebody who has a serious case of OCD.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s no doubt the former suggestion is true. Sally holds one of the first-awarded doctorates in the nation to focus on women\u2019s studies, from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She helped pioneer one of the country\u2019s first college women\u2019s studies programs, at California State University at Sacramento. She taught her first women\u2019s studies class in 1970, and is still going strong, currently an adjunct professor at Syracuse University.<\/p>\n She\u2019s devoted her life to telling the largely untold story of Matilda Joslyn Gage, an endeavor that includes published works, classes and performances, and has culminated in a foundation and award-winning museum.<\/p>\n When she first heard a snippet of Matilda\u2019s tale, her interest was piqued. She had been headed into the field of psychology; if not for that fated introduction to Matilda, Sally would probably be a psychologist, she postulated.<\/p>\n \u201cBe careful,\u201d she warned with a smile. \u201cOne moment can change the course of your entire life.\u201d<\/p>\n Sally grew up in Aberdeen, S.D. Almost everyone in the town was white, creating an incredibly homogenous world that inspired Sally\u2019s longing for diversity, she remembered.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not like a tolerance. It\u2019s not like an acceptance. It\u2019s a raging hunger,\u201d Sally said.<\/p>\n In her early teenage years, she began to rebel against her upbringing. The time had come for her to join her parents\u2019 Congregational church, but she wanted to see what else the world had to offer. So she went to the local library, and began to look through books on other philosophies.<\/p>\n At the age of 14, Sally decided to be a freethinker.<\/p>\n Years later, after she\u2019d started researching Matilda\u2019s life, Sally visited her hometown and stopped by that section of the library, only to discover she\u2019d been touched by Matilda\u2019s influence much earlier than she\u2019d thought.<\/p>\n Sally walked over to the section, dusted off the books and pulled one off the shelf. The inscription read: \u201cTo TC, from Mother.\u201d She looked at another. It read: \u201cMJG.\u201d<\/p>\n Matilda had ties to Aberdeen during the suffrage campaign and her son, Thomas Clarkson \u2014 \u201cTC\u201d \u2014 had donated his collection of books on theology to the Alexander Mitchell Public Library, right in Sally\u2019s hometown.<\/p>\n \u201cI became a freethinker \u2014 like Matilda Joslyn Gage \u2014 at the age of 14, reading books that she had given to her son, knowing nothing about Matilda Joslyn Gage,\u201d she said, humming \u201cThe Twilight Zone\u201d theme song. \u201cIsn\u2019t it crazy?\u201d<\/p>\n In July 1973, Sally was on track to earn a master\u2019s degree in psychology, and teaching classes in women\u2019s studies. A portion of that curriculum was women\u2019s history. To say Sally wasn\u2019t fond of the section would be an understatement.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t care about history at all,\u201d she admitted. \u201cIn fact, I hated it.\u201d<\/p>\n That changed with Matilda. A friend had told Sally the suffragist was connected to Aberdeen. Sally drew a connection: her mother had a friend named Matilda Gage. She called her mother to inquire, and found she was friends with Matilda Joslyn Gage\u2019s granddaughter, also named Matilda.<\/p>\n Searching for an anecdote to liven up the history section of women\u2019s studies, Sally arranged a meeting with Matilda. Matilda welcomed Sally into the house, pointing out photos and furniture of particular significance. Then, they entered the dining room, and Sally was met with stacks upon stacks of Matilda Joslyn Gage\u2019s letters and papers.<\/p>\n Here lay all this information about a woman who had cofounded the National Woman Suffrage Association with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; whose Fayetteville home was a stop on the Underground Railroad; who spoke out during the 1870s against unjust treatment of Native Americans and was adopted into the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation; and who, in 1890, formed the Woman\u2019s National Liberal Union to fight for separation of church and state.<\/p>\n The list of Matilda\u2019s feats continues, and yet her name wasn\u2019t widely known in feminist studies.<\/p>\n \u201cOK, there\u2019s a different story here,\u201d Sally thought, and vowed to dig deeper to learn this woman\u2019s history.<\/p>\n After all, Sally was still fighting the same war Matilda had waged a century before, and still faced some of the same issues. In discussing and addressing those problems, Sally and her colleagues created the first minor in women\u2019s studies in the country.<\/p>\n \u201c[The program] grew out of the women\u2019s movement,\u201d Sally explained. \u201cIt didn\u2019t grow out of the academy.\u201d<\/p>\n She and other women discussed the discrimination they encountered \u2014 being told they were \u201cabsolutely brilliant\u201d because they \u201cthought like men\u201d; having to maneuver to avoid being grabbed; the shame that accompanied conversations about rape \u2014 and they came to a conclusion.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s when we realized, \u2018We\u2019re not messed up. We\u2019re messed over,\u2019\u201d Sally said. \u201cAnd women\u2019s studies grew out of that.\u201d<\/p>\n After Sally discovered Matilda, she completed her master\u2019s degree in psychology, and searched for a women\u2019s studies program at the doctoral level. She came up short.<\/p>\n Because women\u2019s studies is intrinsically interdisciplinary, she entered an interdisciplinary program and earned a doctorate in the history of consciousness with a concentration in women\u2019s studies.<\/p>\n Her dissertation was entitled: \u201cThat Word is Liberty: a Biography of Matilda Joslyn Gage.\u201d Sally\u2019s was one of the first doctorates in the country awarded for work in women\u2019s studies.<\/p>\n Delving into Matilda\u2019s history, Sally\u2019s loathing of the subject lessened.<\/p>\n \u201cI just wanted to learn how to talk to this dead woman,\u201d she joked.<\/p>\n Having found the \u201crevolutionary power of history,\u201d Sally became a self-proclaimed \u201cborn-again historian.\u201d The history she\u2019d been taught covered \u201cgreat men, great wars, great dates\u201d; but it wasn\u2019t one single person who changed history, she explained.<\/p>\n \u201cAbraham Lincoln didn\u2019t free the slaves,\u201d Sally said. \u201cAbolitionists did.\u201d<\/p>\n That knowledge influenced Sally\u2019s continuation of Matilda\u2019s efforts. For instance, Matilda fought for equal pay, a battle still waging on today. If women received 50 cents to every dollar a man received in 1850, and that figure has grown to 79 cents now, Sally posed a question: how many years until it\u2019s an even match?<\/p>\n \u201cThe answer is you don\u2019t have to wait 150 years. You can get it tomorrow if you demand,\u201d Sally said. \u201cSo I think that\u2019s the power of history, to transform our work and our vision and what we do. We can change the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Sally first laid eyes on Matilda Joslyn Gage\u2019s home at 210 E. Genesee St. in Fayetteville in 1976. It was not a sight or a site to behold. The house was rental property, and had fallen into disrepair.<\/p>\n While Sally was teaching around the country, publishing articles and books on Matilda\u2019s work and performing as Matilda, she would make her way back to Central New York often to visit the Gage home.<\/p>\n Then, years later in 1997, Sally found herself teaching at Syracuse University for two semesters as the Jeanne K. Watson Women\u2019s Studies Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities. She held meetings with people locally to survey interest in purchasing the property and somehow honoring Matilda. While there was some interest, someone told Sally, \u201cIt\u2019s not going to happen unless you come back and do it.\u201d<\/p>\n So, in 1998, she moved from a five-bedroom house in Aberdeen, where she\u2019d cared for her father until he passed away, into a one-bedroom apartment in the Gage home.<\/p>\n With the help of friends and colleagues she\u2019d made during years of visits to the area, she formed a board of directors. Then, with the assistance from lieutenant governor Mary Anne Krupsak, the foundation was incorporated. The team spent about a year solidifying its vision and mission, and the foundation became a tax-exempt nonprofit organization.<\/p>\n The next 10 years were spent fundraising $1 million to purchase and restore the house. The Matilda Joslyn Gage Center opened in 2010.<\/p>\n Rather than telling the story of the house as it was \u2014 where Matilda slept, ate and worked \u2014 the center has dedicated each room in the home to a cause Matilda invested in, including a Haudenosaunee room, religious freedom room and an Underground Railroad room.<\/p>\n \u201cWe decided that it was a house of ideas,\u201d Sally said.<\/p>\n During the Civil War, Matilda gave a flag presentation speech to the Fayetteville 122 Regimen.<\/p>\n \u201cShe sent them off to war with their flag, which the women of Fayetteville had made. And she said, \u2018Until there is absolute equality for every group, rich and poor, men and women, native born and immigrant\u2019 \u2014 she names everybody \u2014 \u2018until there is absolute equality, there will be no permanent peace,\u2019\u201d Sally said. She offered a question. \u201cAnd so the challenge of that is: is the Civil War over yet?\u201d<\/p>\n That absolute equality is the mission of the foundation and center, achieved through education and the use of dialogue.<\/p>\n In the past, the foundation received a grant to host a dialogue on reproductive choice. They brought together people from different backgrounds who held different beliefs. One group had representatives from both Planned Parenthood and the Catholic Diocese. At the end of the session, they reached a point of trust at which they could share personal stories.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I think it\u2019s important \u2014 especially now when the country is so polarized \u2014 to find ways that we can bring people together to talk about the issues that divide us and the issues that are really relevant,\u201d Sally said.<\/p>\n The foundation was recently awarded another grant that will fund a dialogue and exhibits on native issues of sovereignty, both at the center and at the Women\u2019s Rights National Historical Park.<\/p>\n The foundation\u2019s focus this year \u2014 on the centennial celebration of women gaining the right to vote in our state \u2014 is the origin of women\u2019s rights in the area, dating back much further than the age of suffragists.<\/p>\n Long before Matilda\u2019s fight for equality as a woman in the 1800s, the Haudenosaunee women had more rights than some women do today, Sally explained.<\/p>\n \u201cSo that\u2019s the story that we want to tell \u2014 that the story of women voting in New York state does not begin in 1917. It begins before Columbus,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Not many people can say they\u2019ve devoted their life to telling someone else\u2019s story.<\/p>\n When Sally discovered Matilda Joslyn Gage and what the suffragist stood for \u2014 not just women\u2019s rights, but issues like ending sex trafficking, sexual abuse of children by priests and violence against women \u2014 she knew she had to tell her story.<\/p>\n \u201cHistory isn\u2019t what happened,\u201d Sally said. \u201cIt\u2019s who tells the story.\u201d<\/p>\n If Matilda hadn\u2019t grabbed her, Sally would be a psychologist now. Reflecting back on the last few decades, Sally remarked that it\u2019s been an honor to hang out with Matilda.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s got blemishes. She\u2019s got problems. But I have a lot of respect for Gage,\u201d Sally said, adding that Matilda Joslyn Gage really has something to give us today. \u201cShe constantly pushes me forward. She constantly challenges me through the integrity of her actions, but also the wisdom of her words.\u201d SWM <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n To learn more about Sally Roesch Wagner, visit sallyroeschwagner.com<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\nMatilda\u2019s early influence<\/h4>\n
Meeting Matilda<\/h4>\n
The foundation\u2019s founding<\/h4>\n
The mission<\/h4>\n
History in the making<\/h4>\n