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Hillary Clinton's Candidacy Brings Extra Attention To Seneca Falls

Hillary Clinton's run for President of the United States has brought an additional focus on women's rights and to the place where those rights got an important boost in the mid 19th and early 20th century.

Clinton already is quite familiar to people at the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls. They inducted her in 2005; in fact daughter Chelsea made a stop there earlier this year to campaign for her mom.

Abby Glogower is a curator and educator at the Hall of Fame, and she emphasizes they are non-political. But she says it certainly is significant to note that Clinton is the first woman nominated by a major political party to run for president.

“We’re so thrilled, to see one of our inductees secure a degree of success and such visible success that , you know, a hundred years ago, women fighting for suffrage barely could have dreamed of,“ she told WXXI News.

Jeanne Giovannini  is President of the Board of Directors of the National Women's Hall of Fame, and she expects interest around women's rights and the hall will be amplified by Clinton's candidacy.

“I’ve had visitors from Vietnam, there’s another group coming from Korea who actually want to start women’s halls of fame or have the beginnings of them and our interested in what we’re doing here in Seneca Falls.”

Kimberly Szewczyk is chief of Interpretation and Education at the Women's Rights National Historical Park, also located in Seneca Falls. She also expects the buzz about Clinton's candidacy to increase interest in the history of the women's suffrage movement.

“We have people come from all over the world to stand in that spot that Elizabeth Cady Stanton stood and where she was the first one to publicly say we want the right to vote.”

Officials with the museum and the park say they hope the focus on women's rights issues continues well after the presidential election.

The National Women's Hall of Fame is in the midst of a major project, with plans for the museum to move to the nearby historic Seneca Knitting Mill complex.

Randy Gorbman is WXXI's director of news and public affairs. Randy manages the day-to-day operations of WXXI News on radio, television, and online.