Women March, the current exhibition in the Joyce B. Cowin Gallery of Women’s History, looks at 200 years of women’s activism, including a variety of strategies and tactics, from speeches and writing to fundraising and protests. It includes more than 80 film clips from 1915 to 2019 to create an immersive experience and highlight the…

“We hold these truths to be self-evident…” Even the least historically well-versed of American citizens might recognize these stirring words from the Declaration of Independence, issued some 244 years ago this summer. The document outlined the American colonists’ gripes against Great Britain and its king, whose “repeated injuries and usurpations” the petition’s penman, Thomas Jefferson,…

The New-York Historical Society’s exhibition, Women March, commemorates the centennial of the 19th Amendment as it explores the efforts of a wide range of women’s collective efforts to expand American democracy in the centuries before and after the suffrage victory. While the Museum is temporarily closed, we are committed to sharing its ideas from afar. In…

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has upended plans to celebrate the centennial of the 19th Amendment on August 26. In addition to the practical obstacles like the closure of indoor spaces and the suspension of large gatherings, political considerations complicate the commemoration. How are we to celebrate the 19th Amendment when many non-white women remained barred…

There are numerous accounts and retellings of momentous civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s. Perhaps most notable is the march from Selma to Montgomery, AL, which took three attempts and federal protection for activists to reach their destination safely on March 25, 1965, and which pushed President Lyndon B. Johnson to send voting rights legislation…