My Great Great Aunt Rose of the Lower East Side:
A Family Story by Kate Pastor

“Cinderella of the Sweatshops.” “Rose of the Ghetto.” “The Socialist Socialite.”

Before Rose Pastor Stokes was so-named, she rolled stogies in an Ohio factory and wrote letters to the Jewish Daily News between and during shifts. She was hired as a reporter and moved to New York’s Lower East Side, marrying a rich philanthropist she had interviewed for a story. But this was no fairytale.

When a newspaper reported that she had been arrested, it added the word “again.” She was as stoic when being convicted of violating the Espionage Act as she had been gushing in her girlish adoration of her husband-to-be.

Kate Pastor, a Bronx-based journalist, will explore the life of this socialist, feminist activist — also known as Aunt Rose — with this lecture/slideshow.