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Maggie Lena Walker was an African American woman, a banker, a business leader, and a civic leader. In 1903, she was the first woman to establish a bank in the United States, the Saint Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond. She was also the first…

Maggie Lena Walker was an African American woman who became a banker, business leader, and social reformer. She was the first woman to establish and become the president of a bank in the United States. Walker was born in 1864 in Richmond, Virginia.…

In 1919, at the National American Woman Suffrage Association’s (NAWSA) convention, President Carrie Chapman Catt proposed in her address the creation of a “league of women voters to finish the fight and aid in the reconstruction of the nation.” In…

World War I brought about great shifts in American society. As the war began, women were not allowed to vote or serve in military combat roles. As the nation was gripped by war, the entire population was mobilized to produce weapons and supplies for…

World War I brought about great shifts in American society. As the nation was gripped by war, the entire population was mobilized to produce weapons and supplies for the troops. The outbreak of war sent many men off to fight overseas which opened…

The broadside image is that of Equal Suffrage League of Virginia (ESL) which was founded in 1909 in Richmond. The ESL became one of the most influential suffrage organizations in the country. Among the twenty founding women, co-founder, women’s…

Richmond native Lila Meade Valentine was born in 1865 and devoted much of her life to advocating education, health-care reform, and woman suffrage. She played an important role in creating organizations which focused on health care and public schools…

The Equal Suffrage League of Virginia (ESL) was founded in 1909 in Richmond when about twenty women met at the home of Anne Clay Crenshaw. The league sought to win women the right to vote. Although the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776…

For a significant portion of American history, women were not allowed to vote. Although they were considered citizens with rights equal to men, voting was considered a privilege and not a right and thus not extended to women. In the 1910s, women…

Circulated in Staunton, Virginia, the broadside dates to sometime between 1900 and 1919. In it, the women of Staunton asked the men in their community to vote in favor of prohibition or the legal elimination of alcohol consumption and sale. The…