Rose Schneiderman: A Voice for Women and Workers, with Annie Schneiderman Valliere
Program Date: October 24, 2024
Rose Schneiderman, a tiny Jewish immigrant, was one of the most influential labor and suffrage activists of the early twentieth century. She remains a heroine to activists around the world and was a resident of both the Village and the Lower East Side. Her grand-niece, Annie Schneiderman Valliere, will share both a personal and historical perspective on the life and impact of this trail blazer.
She served as a labor advisor to FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt. Her efforts were instrumental in establishing the eight-hour workday, workers' compensation, and numerous other rights and safety protections that benefit workers nationwide today.
From 1906 until the achievement of partial suffrage in 1920, Rose Schneiderman tirelessly spoke and marched in the halls and streets of New York, Ohio, Washington, D.C., and as far south as Tennessee in the fight for women's suffrage. Unfortunately, much of the significant work done by Schneiderman and other working-class women to secure these historic suffrage gains has been nearly forgotten.
Valliere will discuss Rose Schneiderman’s contributions to the suffrage movement, her later efforts to oppose the Equal Rights Amendment, and her extensive work for human rights from 1909 through the 1940s, both in New York and on the national and international stages.
Annie Schneiderman Valliere, a great- niece of Rose Schneiderman, knew Rose personally and has spent over a decade writing her biography. Annie was awarded the Eichleberger-Linzer Grant from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. She has spoken to unions, senior organizations, historical societies, and university students, at conferences and suffrage events—including a visit to the Roosevelt House in New York. Annie's essay, "The Two Roses: A Grand Niece Remembers," was published in Talking to the Girls: Intimate and Political Essays on the Triangle Fire, by Edvige Guinta and Mary Anne Trasciatti, 2022. She has also contributed articles such as; “Rose Schneiderman,” Turning Point Suffragist Memorial Association, 2015,” “Schneiderman, Rose,” “Uprising of the 20,000,” and “Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire”, Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, and Economic History, 2013; Annie was interviewed by the_ Jewish Daily Forward in 2011, “An Aunt’s Legacy Erased,” for the New York Magazine’_s The Cut in 2016, “Granddaughters of the Revolution” and the Maine AFL-CIO News Letter, “Mainer, Annie Valliere Remembers Her Great Aunt & Labor Leader Rose Schneiderman.”