July Virtual Author Talk: Dorothy Wickenden

Register Online 

• The Agitators: Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women’s Rights by Dorothy Wickenden, in conversation with S.C. Gwynne
• Tuesday, July 27, 2021—6pm EDT on Zoom
• Presented by the Boston Public Library, American Ancestors/New England Historic Genealogical Society, and the State Library of Massachusetts

The fascinating and crucial stories of abolition, the Underground Railroad, the early women’s rights movement, and the Civil War – told from the perspective of three remarkable women. 

Join us to hear the story of the “agitators,” three friends and neighbors in Auburn, New York, at the forefront of cultural change during the Civil War years. Harriet Tubman was one of the most important conductors on the underground railroad. Martha Wright, Quaker mother of seven, and Frances Seward, wife of Governor, then Senator, then Secretary of State William H. Seward, were fellow agitators, hiding enslaved men, women, and children rescued by Tubman in their basement kitchens. Through these women’s richly detailed and intimate letters, Dorothy Wickenden brings to life their remarkable work, including their personal and political intersections with Lincoln, Seward, Daniel Webster, Frederick Douglass, Charles Sumner, John Brown, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and William Lloyd Garrison. Don’t missing hearing about The Agitators and this extraordinary period of American history.

Dorothy Wickenden is executive editor of The New Yorker, where she is also a writer and moderator of its weekly podcast The Political Scene. A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, she was previously national affairs editor at Newsweek and executive editor at The New Republic. She is the author of Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West.  

S.C. Gwynne is the author of Hymns of the Republic and the New York Times bestsellers Rebel Yell and Empire of the Summer Moon, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. As a journalist, he has worked at Time as bureau chief, national correspondent, and senior editor; and at Texas Monthly as executive editor. 

To register for this free online event, please visit: https://boston-public-library.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_3k4Qn9c_T66yCambFxbN-A 

Be sure to check out other upcoming events hosted by our partners:

• Boston Public Library: https://www.bpl.org/author-talk-series-at-the-central-library/
• NEHGS/American Ancestors: https://www.americanancestors.org/inspire 

Author Talks Committee
State Library of Massachusetts