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

COLLEEN SHOGAN NAMED 11TH ARCHIVIST OF THE UNITED STATES AND FIRST WOMAN TO LEAD THE AGENCY

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https://www.archivesfoundation.org/news/dr-colleen-shogan-confirmed-as-archivst/

Trail Highlights

Bethune-Cookman University Installs 2nd NVWT Marker

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A NVWT marker was installed honoring Frances R. Keyser on the campus of Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach. The marker was installed alongside school founder Dr. Mary Bethune's Trail marker…

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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