Despite the pleasures of a three-day weekend, the second Monday in October has a highly contentious history. Although it was not celebrated at the federal level until 1934, the commemoration of Christopher Columbus’s first voyage became widespread at a time of intense anti-immigrant—particularly anti-Asian—sentiment. As historian Malinda Maynor Lowery put it, in the late 1800s,…
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Indigenous Peoples’ Day: Honoring Caroline Parker, Haudenosaunee Artist
October 8, 2021
Despite the pleasures of a three-day weekend, the second Monday in October has a highly contentious history. Although it was not celebrated at the federal level until 1934, the commemoration of Christopher Columbus’s first voyage became widespread at a time of intense anti-immigrant—particularly anti-Asian—sentiment. As historian Malinda Maynor Lowery put it, in the late 1800s,…
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Eliza Webster’s Seneca Village and 19th-Century Black Life in NYC
February 17, 2021
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…
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Black Women’s Activism and “Women March”
February 4, 2021
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…
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Saving the Symbols of Democracy: Dolley Madison in 1814
January 8, 2021
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,…
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Looking Back at 2020: Highlights of Women at the Center
December 30, 2020
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…
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Wonder Woman: Feminist Icon?
December 21, 2020
The sequel Wonder Woman 1984 is hitting theaters and HBO Max on December 25, so the Center for Women’s History is taking a look back at how the superhero character—who first appeared in a comic book in 1941—has been imagined, utilized, and contested as a feminist icon over the decades. Wonder Woman was the creation…
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