Browse Items (30 total)

During the eighteenth century, voting was considered a privilege, not a right. Although governmental bodies, such as the House of Burgesses, were meant to be representative, a majority of people could not actually vote. A voter in early Virginia had…

This document shows a portrait of Mary Willing Byrd painted in the early 1770’s by artist Matthew Pratt. After placing three advertisements in the Virginia Gazette, William Byrd hired Pratt to paint a portrait of his second wife Mary Willing Byrd. In…

Molly Pitcher is a fabled figure said to have fought during the Revolutionary War. Women served in many capacities during the Revolution, doing everything from laundry to serving as armed and uniformed soldiers. The name “Molly Pitcher” is a generic…

Along with the abolition of slavery, women's rights were also a topic for reformers. The woman suffrage movement began in 1848 at the first woman's rights convention, which was held in Seneca Falls, New York, with the participants calling for…

Maggie Lena Walker was an Black woman banker, business leader, and civic leader and 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. Her mother Elizabeth Draper…

This broadside was circulated in Staunton, Virginia, 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 women…

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…

Richmond native Lila Meade Valentine was born in 1865 and devoted much of her life to advocating education and health-care reform and woman suffrage. In 1909, Valentine cofounded the Equal Suffrage League of Virginia (ESL) and was elected the…

The Equal Suffrage League of Virginia (ESL) was founded in 1909 in Richmond. The ESL became one of the most influential suffrage organizations in the country. Among the twenty founding women, Lila Meade Valentine, a Richmond native, was elected the…

World War I required the marshaling of the resources of the United States as never before. Industries that were geared to the production of automobiles, sewing machines, etc., were shifted to the production of war materiel—guns and new weapons such…