On the weekend of October 20-22, 2000, Worcester will host "Women 2000," a conference and celebration of the 150th anniversary of the first national woman's rights convention, which was held in Worcester in 1850. Sponsored by the Worcester Women's History Project and held at the Centrum Centre and Mechanics Hall, the October 2000 conference will include readings, lectures, discussions, music and drama. WPI students are welcome to attend the events, and in fact Dean of Student Life, Janet Begin Richardson has said the WPI will offer to fund up to five interested students.
Highlights of the conference will include a keynote talk by Jill Ker Conway, first woman president of Smith College, a reading by novelist and poet Marge Piercy, a panel moderated by television commentator Emily Rooney, a performance by the Grammy-Award-winning singing group, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and a historical play, "Angels and Infidels." Conference participants may choose from over 30 workshops, on such topics as labor history, African-American women, health care, childcare, race and gender, teenage perspectives, poverty, and the history of women composers. Among the many conference events will be a 5K road race, a special program for teachers, and a panel of biographers who will discuss Lucy Stone, Dorothea Dix, Clara Barton, and Abby Kelley Foster.
The first National Woman's Rights Convention in 1850 was credited with launching the organized women's rights movement. At that event, over 1000 women and men, black and white, gathered to listen to Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Abby Kelley Foster, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and many other speakers. The 1850 convention committed itself to "equality before the law without distinction of sex or color." A final resolution "bids us remember the million and a half slave women of the South, the most grossly wronged and foully outraged of all women" and it pledged to "omit no effort to raise [them] to a share in the rights we claim for ourselves."
The Women 2000 event, according to its organizers, is "a call to action to continue the dialogue begun in 1850, to provide a forum for discussion on the present status of women, and to explore the challenges and opportunities for the future."
WPI students interested in attending the conference should contact Dean Janet Richardson in the Student Life Office, phone 5201, or Professor Laura Menides in the Humanities and Arts Department, phone 5513. WPI will pay the student conference fee, normally $100 each, for up to five interested students. The conference will take place during WPI's term break, but, according to Prof. Menides, "there may well be students who will stay in Worcester and who want to take advantage of this opportunity to attend what promises to be a fascinating event." The conference, according to Menides, "may lead to interesting Sufficiency Projects, IQPs, or other projects."