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Not For Themselves Alone: Ken Burns, the Nation's Leading Story Teller, Focuses on the Birth of Women's Rights

By Mary Kay Glazer

Ken Burns sat for hours in the red brick Victorian home stuffed with arti-facts, filming portrait after portrait of the women who very early on took up the cause of equality. As the renowned documentary filmmaker gazed through the camera lens, contemplating their every feature, conversing with their silent lips, their ever-expressive eyes, he had an epiphany. He ran to the next room where co-producer Paul Barnes was working, calling out: “I get it! I know these women. I know them!”

    These women are Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the double strand of the 19th Century helix that forever changed women's roles and expectations not only in American culture, but throughout the world. Burns and his longtime film editor Paul Barnes are co-producing a PBS documentary tracing Anthony and Stanton's lives and their far-reaching impact. For Burns, this project like his others, is all part of a process of discovery. He says, “I'm always trying to figure out who we are as a people.”

    The Anthony-Stanton project began back in 1988 during the editing of Burns' signature documentary, The Civil War. Paul Barnes, who has edited most of Burns' documentaries, was reading a book about Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The more he read, the more excited he got. Burns says, “Paul would regale us about what a great story this was.” So Burns urged him to develop the project. Barnes quickly realized that a story about Stanton was not complete without Susan B. Anthony. “The partnership was amazing,” he says. “Neither could have done all she did without the other.”

    Together, during their fifty year friendship, they did incredible things. Stanton was one of the organizers of the first woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls in 1848. She and Anthony, of Rochester, first met in 1851 on a Seneca Falls street corner. Burns believes that meeting may have kept the woman's rights movement alive, and thinks Stanton saw in Anthony “someone who could be her legs and mouthpiece.” In turn, Anthony relied on Stanton, especially early in their relationship, to write the speeches Anthony delivered with such passion.

    Burns says the friendship was “the anatomy of a political movement.” At the time, women could not file a lawsuit, nor own property; they could not be legal guardians of their children; teaching was one of the precious few occupations open to them; and women could not vote. Stanton and Anthony fought to change all this, and they lived to see their efforts bear some fruit.

    “But when eight million women went to the polls and voted for the first time ever in 1920, Elizabeth Stanton had been dead for almost 18 years and Susan B. Anthony for 14,” says Ken Burns. “However, it was their direct legacy of tireless advocacy and a tenacious belief that all Americans—regardless of race, creed or sex—must be treated equally that led to this historic event,” he noted. “And beyond the vote, these two women created a movement that literally transformed American society by winning for women advances in everything from education to divorce law and the right to own property. They are, in my opinion, the two most important women in American history.”

    “This is history running on all cylinders,” says Ken Burns. “It's a thriller. It's one heck of a story.” Yet, he says, if Anthony and Stanton are mentioned in history books at all, it is only in passing. That is why this project is so important. Burns says he is passionate about stories, pointing out that “the driving engine of history is the word `story.'” And the story about Anthony and Stanton was completely—and surprisingly—new to him. “This is the largest social change in the history of the United States with half the population given their rights,” Burns says. Yet most people know far too little about it.

    Now Burns is giving the story the attention it deserves. “My mission is to discover how we as a nation tick.” To discover how Anthony and Stanton ticked, he and Paul Barnes brought their crew to western New York—the cradle of women's rights.

    Lorie Barnum, executive director of the Anthony House—a National Historic Landmark in Rochester—says it was exciting to watch Burns discover the story. She says, “That was the greatest thing, to see him understand. He was astounded that he didn't know this story, that this was such a big part of history and he didn't know it.” Once Burns understood the significance of this story, he had to decide how to portray it. To that end, he created entire scenes and characters—using only photographs, artifacts and his award-winning film techniques.

    Mary Ellen Snyder, chief interpreter and supervisor of the Women's Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, was amazed at the filmmakers' meticulous methods. “They were painstakingly detail oriented,” says Snyder. In filming Stanton's Seneca Falls home—part of the National Park—they made sure they had the right equipment, the right time of day, the right lighting, the inevitable scene that would convey Stanton's essence.

    This is all part of Burns unique style of documentary filmmaking. Burns calls himself an “emotional archaeologist. History is not just dry dates and facts and events which, like cauliflower, is good for you.” He says the documentary will not be sentimental or nostalgic, but “the opposite of that. It will be brave enough to look at Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony when they said and did things they wish they hadn't.” Burns' goal is to create a “complicated and full portrait,” to tell the whole story of the “two most important women in American history, and that they are virtually unknown is a great tragedy.”

    “Just as important as the laws and customs they changed,” Paul Barnes said, “Anthony and Stanton put in place a movement that would continue to fight for equality throughout the 20th century. Hopefully this film will end the long silence surrounding their story and embed it in the public's mind once and for all—for it is an integral part of the ongoing evolution of our American democracy.”

    After the film airs on PBS in November, 1999, these two women and their incredible legacy will no longer be a secret.

The Rescue of the

Susan B. Anthony House:

Ken Burns' Role

In 1997, after years of research, the
trail of history led Ken Burns to
Anthony's home in western New York where, Burns says, “I was ashamed that a site as important in history is in such dire need.” Both the Elizabeth Cady Stanton House in Seneca Falls and the Susan B. Anthony House in Rochester should be as important as the Jefferson Memorial, Burns says. “Other sites may have needs,” he says, “but it's not such a daily struggle for survival.”

    Furthermore, Burns says, “I was stunned by how segregated women's history is.” As he usually does with his documentaries, Burns interviewed the top eight to ten experts on Stanton and Anthony. They were all women. “Men, even the most honorable men, fear to tread into women's history.” So when Lorie Barnum of the Anthony House asked Burns to be the National Honorary Chair of the museum's capital campaign, he said yes. “I wanted to make a statement about the importance of this history.”

    Among the goals of the capital campaign are the opening of the Education and Visitor Center, repair and restoration of the Anthony House, and ultimately, the preservation of Anthony's legacy.

    For more information about the Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton landmarks, contact:

Susan B. Anthony House

17 Madison Street, Rochester, NY 14608

(716-) 235-6124 www.susanbanthonyhouse.org

Women's Rights National Historical Park 136 Fall Street, Seneca Falls, NY 13148 (315) 568-0024

www.nps.gov/wori