Women at the Center

Although every month is women’s history month at the Center for Women’s History, we’re thrilled to honor this month’s celebration with the kick-off keynote of our Diane and Adam E. Max Conference on Women’s History. Our virtual 2021 conference, Breaking News, Breaking Barriers: Women in American Journalism, features a mix of pre-recorded “keynote conversations” and…

Black women have lived in New York City since the Dutch arrived in the 17th century. But what we know about their lives and experiences comes in small snippets of information from historical records that considered their contributions secondary. When Black women do show up, we only get piecemeal clues about their lives, the institutions…

The history of women’s activism over the past 200 years is the story of countless, courageous individual women—collective action begins when just one person confronts injustice, and then another joins her, and then another. Some of these women’s names may be familiar to us, but many Black women’s stories were deliberately left out of a…

There have been moments throughout the nation’s history when individuals have acted to protect the ideals, symbols, and objects of democracy. The reports of young congressional aides carrying cases of electoral votes out of the chambers as they evacuated on January 6, 2021, under threat from insurrectionists, recalled a time during the War of 1812—indeed,…

By all accounts, 2020 was an eventful and historic, yet difficult year. From the public health crisis to social unrest and increasing activism, and from commemorating the suffrage centennial to celebrating breakthroughs in women’s political participation, Women at the Center has sought to uncover silver linings of this difficult time buried not too deeply within…