NCPR News Special: Leonora Barry,
First Voice for Working Women

North Country Public Radio presents an extraordinary profile of one of the unsung heroes in the history of the struggle for the rights of working women in America.

Listen to: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Leonora Barry: First Voice for Working Women tells the true story of a woman who finds herself widowed and penniless in Amsterdam, New York in the early 1880s.  By the end of the decade she would be in the senior ranks of the Knights of Labor, a union with over 600,000 members.  She would travel the country speaking out in favor of equal pay for equal work and racial equality (just 25 years after the Civil War) and against sexual harassment (more than a century before it was formally addressed by legislation.)

Leonora Barry was the first woman labor organizer in American history.  She did more for the cause of working women than anyone else in the late 19th century, yet her story is known by few.  North Country Public Radio has produced a 29-minute program on Leonora Barry.  The program features the words of Leonora Barry and others of the period as portrayed by actors from the North Country of New York State, and original music performed for the program by Potsdam, NY based traditional music group, Frog Bridge.