Susan B. Anthony's Most Defiant Speech, Re-enacted in Adams Friday

Friday, July 3, 6:30pm | Adams, MA | Free

On July 4, 1876—the nation's centennial—Susan B. Anthony and four other women were given passes to observe the official Independence Day ceremony in Philadelphia. They had asked permission to present a Declaration of Rights for Women at the ceremony and been refused. They went anyway. During the ceremony, the five women made their way to the front, handed their Declaration to the startled official in charge, then departed and found an empty bandstand outside the hall, where Anthony read the entire four-page document to a crowd that quickly gathered to hear her.

That act of defiance, by a tenacious woman born in Adams, is the subject of the Susan B. Anthony Birthplace Museum's annual reenactment. On July 3 at 6:30pm on the Adams Town Common, Muriel Dyas reprises her performance as Anthony, joined by a cast of local actors in authentic 19th-century costumes. Reenactors will first read excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, followed by Anthony's speech. The evening includes an interactive component inviting guests to learn more about women's rights, Anthony's activism, and what Independence Day meant to the gender excluded from most of the founding freedoms.

The timing this year adds an extra layer. America's 250th anniversary falls the following day, and Anthony's speech—which opens by acknowledging the nation's centennial pride before driving "the one discordant note" into the heart of the celebration—closes with a demand that "all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever." The words are 150 years old. The reenactment takes place within sight of the bronze statue of Anthony that went up on the Adams Town Common in 2021, which the museum's executive director has described as allowing "almost a conversation between our reenactors and the statue."

Anthony was born in Adams in 1820 and grew up in a Quaker household committed to social reform. She collected anti-slavery petitions at age 17, and later co-founded both the Women's Loyal National League and the National Woman Suffrage Association with Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Adams Town Common, Adams, MA. Free and open to all. More at susanbanthonybirthplace.com.