In 1995, nearly 50,000 people stepped into Anne Frank’s story when a traveling exhibit arrived in Boise. It was a charged, uncertain time. The Aryan Nations was active in North Idaho, and the same currents were pressing farther south. A 27-pound rock covered in racist graffiti had been thrown through the window of the home of Bertha Edwards, the longtime president of the Idaho NAACP. And the campaign for Proposition 1 was spreading anti-LGBTQ rhetoric across the state. The message was clear: who belonged — and who did not — was up for debate.
But that is not the only story that was unfolding.
Three women stood in that crowded exhibit hall and saw something else entirely: neighbors lingering over photographs, families reading aloud to one another, students asking questions that did not have easy answers. Where some saw division, they saw attention. Where some saw fear, they saw opportunity. Idaho, they believed, was not closing in on itself. It was reaching toward something better.
So in 1996 they began to build.
They founded a human rights education nonprofit to construct what is now the Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial, dedicated in 2002 in downtown Boise. A vision that could have been limited to a single plaque became an internationally recognized education park. Anne’s story anchors the space, joined by the voices of Frederick Douglass, Eleanor Roosevelt, Gandhi, and others — words etched in stone that ask visitors to consider their own human rights commitments. From the beginning, the Memorial carried a clear premise: just and joyful communities are not declared into existence. They are built, slowly and deliberately, by people willing to learn from one another and remain in conversation together.
Over time, that conviction took hold. What began as a physical space grew into a living one: a center for human rights education where people of all ages are invited to connect, learn, and create communities that center dignity and belonging.
Thirty years on, we are still guided by this vision of communities where human rights are a lived reality for all. The questions before us now — how to protect what makes us different, keep our histories from disappearing, and create a welcoming community for everyone — are every bit as urgent as the ones our founders faced, now sharpened by social media, national unrest, and the rise of AI. And so, we continue to design spaces for connecting, learning, and creating.
We are still building when a seventh-grader from rural Idaho stands in front of Anne’s statue and understands something profound about courage and hope in the face of hatred.
We are still building when a high school student in the Wassmuth Youth Leadership Program presents her human rights initiative to a room of adults who listen, really listen, and she leaves committed to continuing the work.
We are still building when a teacher completes the year-long Wassmuth Human Rights Education Fellowship and returns to his classroom with new tools, a steadier voice, and a community of colleagues to support him.
We are still building when a community member walks into a human rights book club unsure how to speak about painful histories and walks out with better questions and the resolve to keep learning.
And we are still building when our words reach folks around the world — and readers pause to consider the role they can play in creating a better world.
This is what the work looks like moving forward: not distant, but particular. A conversation held a little longer. A question asked more honestly. A choice to stay engaged when it would be easier to turn away. Multiplied across thousands of people, those choices begin to shape a different kind of community.
Three women stood in a crowded exhibit hall and saw possibility. This Saturday, thirty years into the work they began, we gather to celebrate what that seeing set in motion — and the work their vision continues to inspire. Join us!
Jess Westhoff and Christina Bruce-Bennion, Wassmuth Center for Human Rights
