While our exhibition Cover Story: Katharine Graham, CEO, is on view in the Joyce B. Cowin Women’s History Gallery, the Center for Women’s History is exploring the lives and professional experiences of women in media. For this installment, we’re diving into one of the most famous events in investigative journalism: when activist Ella Baker and…

In 2008, Alison Saar’s statue Swing Low became the first public monument to an African American woman in New York City. Located in Harlem, it honors Harriet Tubman, the celebrated African American abolitionist who self-emancipated in 1849 and repeatedly risked her life to complete an estimated (and astonishing) 13 trips back to her native Maryland…

For fans of the Emmy-award winning series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, on Amazon Prime Video that traces the fictional stand-up comedy career of a former housewife in the 1950s, much of the show’s excitement comes from its colorful portrayals of real-life comedy legends. In the season three finale, viewers are treated to a night at…

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…