SENECA FALLS, N.Y. (AP) - The National Women’s Hall of Fame will add 10 inductees this weekend while also celebrating the 100th anniversary of women securing the right to vote in New York.
The Seneca Falls hall in upstate New York, the site of the first women’s rights convention in 1848, has inducted a new class of exemplary women every two years beginning in 1973.
Three of this year’s inductees will be honored posthumously, including “A Raisin in the Sun” playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who died in 1965, and former Connecticut Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce, who died in 1987. The geneticist and cancer researcher Janet Rowley, who died in 2013, will also be honored.
The living inductees will include autism and livestock advocate Temple Grandin, philanthropist and makeup entrepreneur Victoria Jackson, film studio executive Sherry Lansing, actress Aimee Mullins, three-star Marine Gen. Carol Mutter and chef Alice Waters. The event will also honor Matilda Raffa Cuomo, wife of the late New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and mother of current Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who’s being honored for her work supporting children’s rights and mentoring.
All seven living inductees are expected to speak at Saturday’s induction ceremony.
On Sunday, Cuomo, Jackson, Lansing, Mullins and Mutter are scheduled to take part in a panel discussion exploring how women create change.
The inductees are nominated by the public and chosen based on their contributions to society by a team of experts from such fields as the arts, athletics, business, education, government, humanities, philanthropy and science.
Mullins, whose legs were amputated when she was a baby, was a college track and field athlete and appeared in the television series, “Stranger Things.”
“I can do anything if I set my mind to it, which is a wonderful naiveté,” she told WXXI News this week. “Most People have it beaten out of them, just because of life.”
Grandin told the Rochester radio station that being a woman in the male-dominated cattle industry, where she has pioneered animal welfare, pushed her to excel.
“I was really motivated to make sure that my stuff was really good and that I wasn’t stupid,” said Grandin, who was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder as a toddler.
The weekend activities at the hall will also include a luncheon to commemorate the centennial of women’s voting rights in New York. Three years later, in 1920, ratification of the 19th Amendment gave all American women the right to vote.
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