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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

Diversity Dispatch: National Women’s History Month: Amy Post


Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman, and … Amy Post?

While not as well-known as the other three New York women, Amy Kirby Post shared their passion for the abolition of slavery and for the recognition of women’s rights. She and her husband, Isaac, opened their house at 56 Sophia St. in Rochester (now the site of the Hochstein School of Music & Dance on Plymouth Ave.) as one of the primary stops on the Underground Railroad. Often the next stop after Frederick Douglass’s house, their basement sheltered as many as 12 or 13 escaped slaves at a time.

Amy often welcomed not only Frederick Douglass—a close friend--but other prominent abolitionists, including Sojourner Truth and William Lloyd Garrison, as guests in her home. With three other Rochester women, she founded the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society in 1843 to raise funds to free slaves. They encountered controversy for the racial integration of their fundraising fair in 1850. She and her husband also helped organize the first women’s rights convention in Rochester in 1848 which continued the ground-breaking convention at Seneca Falls.

At the age of 88, Amy Post traveled to the first convention of the International Council of Women in Washington, DC. She lived to see the end of slavery but not women’s suffrage.

In honor of Women’s History Month, don’t miss the “Herstory” poster presentation about women at MCC when it moves to the Damon City Campus Atrium March 22-30 if you haven’t already seen it at Brighton. The exhibit is sponsored by the MCC chapter of the American Association of Women in Community Colleges (AAWCC) and the Diversity Council.

(Amy Post information compiled from entries in: Rochester/Monroe County Freedom Trail Commission. Rochester Region Underground Railroad: Network to Freedom: A Guidebook. Rochester, NY: The Commission, 2003 (p. 57-58), and in Barnes, Joseph W., and Mary Lynn Stevens Heininger. 4 Score & 4: Rochester Portraits. Rochester, NY: Rochester Sesquicentennial, Inc., 1984 (p. 18).

This is part of a monthly series of articles from the Diversity Council about topics related to diversity and multiculturalism.

Debbie Mohr
Diversity Council (ETS: Libraries)
03/16/2012