Anthony Birthplace Museum Hosts Tea Party, Poetry Reading

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ADAMS, Mass. — The Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum will hold an afternoon tea featuring poetry readings by Nancy Manning and Karen Ciosek. 
 
The event will take place outside on Sunday, Aug. 4, at 3 p.m. with tea, sandwiches, baked goods by Shire Cottage Bakery, and cake. Table settings are being donated by Mary Whitman, flowers by Full Well Farm, and napkins provided by Annie Selkie Outlet. 
 
Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for children. Members of the museum attend for free. In the event of rain the poetry reading will continue indoors, and the tea will be postponed. 
 
How does this relate to suffragist Susan B. Anthony?
 
One could say that women's suffrage started with a tea party. On July 9, 1848, Jane Hunt invited Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Mary Ann McClintock and Mary Wright to her house for tea. During their conversation, they struck upon an idea: a convention for women's rights. Just 10 days later, they held the Seneca Falls (N.Y.) Convention, drafting an organizing document, the Declaration of Sentiments. 
 
 Anthony was not at the Seneca Falls Convention, but met Stanton later through a mutual friend, Amelia Bloomer. She and Stanton's friendship, immortalized in their plaster cast handshake currently on display in the museum, was the lifeline of the early women's suffrage movement. 
 
Tea continued to play a role, with women's groups in California packaging and selling tea to raise funds. Ava Belmont held tea parties for up to 100 in her back yard, featuring "Votes for Women" tableware. Later, the National American Women's Suffrage Association sold "Votes for Women" teacups as another fundraiser. 
 

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Berkshires Turns Out in Protest Against Trump Administration

By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff

Hundreds of people were at Park Square on Saturday afternoon to protest actions by the Trump administration and expressed fears about the potential loss of civil rights and Social Security.
ADAMS, Mass. — A cold and rainy Saturday didn't stop hundreds of Berkshire residents from making known their feelings about recent actions by the Trump administration. 
 
At least 150 people assembled in Adams around the Town Common, with the statue of voting rights icon Susan B. Anthony in the background, and at the Adams Free Library where Civil War veterans once gathered.
 
"Last time I was in one of these marches was in 1969 against the Vietnam War down in Boston," said Michael Wellington of Adams.
 
In Williamstown, more than 200 people turned out to line both sides of Main Street (Route 2) in front of First Congregational Church at noon on Saturday afternoon. And hundreds gathered at Park Square in Pittsfield, with chants so loud they could be heard from the McKay Street Parking Garage. 
 
"We need peaceful protest, I think, is the only thing that is going to make a difference to certain people," said Jackie DeGiorgis of North Adams, standing across the corner from the Adams Town Common.  "So I'm hoping we can get more people out here and say their peace. ...
 
"I would like our our representatives in Congress, to do their job and listen to their constituents, because I don't think that's happening."
 
Her friend Susan Larson King, also of North Adams, acknowledged that "government needs to be downsized, maybe."
 
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