National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites

Let's put women's history sites on the map!

 

National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites

Let's put women's history sites on the map!

 

National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites

Let's put women's history sites on the map!

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The National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites advocates for historic sites that center the preservation and interpretation of the important role of women and gender non-conforming individuals as core to the American story.

 

 

Women’s Suffrage, Historic Markers, and Race:

A Statement from the Board of the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites and the Advisory Committee of the National Votes for Women Trail

In this moment of historical reckoning about race, we, members of the Board of the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites and the Advisory Committee of the National Votes for Women Trail, mourn the loss of Black lives—not only the recent killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Elijah McClain, but the historic loss of thousands of others who have died throughout U.S. history, martyrs to a system of white supremacy. We live now with the echoes of these tragedies and with the systemic racism that still pervades our world.

In this context, we continue our work to commemorate those who supported voting rights for women. The Nineteenth Amendment expanded voting rights to more than twenty-five million women, more people than any other event in U.S. history.

As we remember all those who struggled for the right to vote, we also recognize that racism pervaded much of the European American suffrage movement. Before and after 1920, many methods (including legal restrictions, intimidation, and murder) were used to exclude both women and men—especially African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos/x, and Asian Americans—from voting. In 2020, one hundred years after passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, one hundred and fifty years after the Fifteenth Amendment, and despite interim victories such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, (and its extensions to end discrimination against language minorities in 1975 and people with disabilities in 1982), we continue to face challenges to the right of all adult citizens to vote.  

We recognize that we all share in patterns of systemic racism. Our intent is not to ignore this racism but to open it up for public debate. To leave woman suffragists out of the story because they inherited, benefitted from, and often promoted an entrenched system of white supremacy would be to ignore the complex and pervasive intertwining of gender, race, and class–past and present.  

We work to understand our past so that we can help to create a world of justice and respect for all people in the present and future. 

View our National Votes For Women Trail database! If you would like to add to our growing list of sites, please complete this form.  If you need assistance completing the form, see our tutorial.

News

Telling Women’s Stories: A Toolkit for Historic Sites and Museums Launches!

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The NCWHS is excited to announce the launch of the Telling Women's Stories: A Toolkit for Historic Sites and Museums, created by the NCWHS Research and Interpretation Committee to assist sites as…

Trail Highlights

Sojourner Truth honored in Northampton, MA, with NVWT marker

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The Sojourner Truth Memorial Committee (STMC), Suffrage100MA and the city of Northampton, Massachusetts, hosted the Annual Sojourner Truth Memorial Celebration on Sunday, May 28, 2023, at 2pm at the Sojourner Truth Memorial Park in the village of Florence,…

Partner Profile

The William G. Pomeroy Foundation

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The Pomeroy Foundation, which is a private, grant-making foundation based in Syracuse, N.Y., is providing grants through its National Women’s Suffrage Marker Grant Program in order to support recognizing historically…

Suffrage Profile

Paulsdale

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Paulsdale, a National Historic Landmark in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey since 1992, was the birthplace and family home of women’s rights activist Alice Stokes Paul (1885-1977). Built c. 1800, the…

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National Collaborative for Women's History Sites

The National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites (NCWHS) supports and promotes the preservation and interpretation of sites and locales that bear witness to women's participation in American life. The Collaborative makes women's contributions to history visible so that all women's experiences and potential are fully valued. Be a part of our mission -- Join the NCWHS today!
National Collaborative for Women's History Sites
National Collaborative for Women's History Sites4 hours ago
The massive textile mills of Lowell, Mass., signaled a change for American labor.
National Collaborative for Women's History Sites
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National Collaborative for Women's History Sites
National Collaborative for Women's History Sites2 days ago
Women contributed to the advancement of astronomy and astrophysics at Yerkes Observatory in the early twentieth century. They were not only calculators or assistants. They…
National Collaborative for Women's History Sites
National Collaborative for Women's History Sites3 days ago
At Walden Pond, the National Book Award-winning author talks nature, freedom, and the outdoors as a shaping force for women in history.
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Niagara University professor of history Shannon Risk sheds new light on the life and work of Elizabeth Upham Yates (1857–1942), a nationally known activist and missionary to China, in her
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Fiction writer Maurice Carlos Ruffin joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about the literary and historical antecedents to Fani Willis, the Georgia prosecutor who has file…