SYRACUSE, NY (WRVO) – When Kamala Harris is sworn in today as the nation’s first female vice president, it’s a milestone that will not go unnoticed in central New York. It’s a day that Sally Roesch Wagner, a women’s suffrage movement historian and founder of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation in Fayetteville, has been waiting for, for a long time. Though, Wagner said it’s been a much longer wait for Gage, who was a 19th century suffragist.
“I think she would say, ‘Finally. What took you this long? In 1884, I was an elector at large in the Equal Rights Party ticket when we had a woman for president and a woman for vice president and the media said we were the campaign that was raising the most issues. It’s taken you this long to get a vice president and you’ve never had a woman president?’” Wagner said. “She hounds me with her anger and frustration, even from the grave.”