Remember the Ladies

This Women's Equality Day (August 26) marks the 103rd anniversary of the certification of the 19th Amendment, which guarantees voting rights for American women. Learn about Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Zitkála-Šá, Mary Church Terrell, and Maria Guadalupe Evangelina de Lopez, four of the many women of color who participated in the suffrage movement. They did so despite the racist federal, state, and local laws and policies — not the 19th Amendment itself — that prevented most women (and men) of color from being able to exercise their right to vote.

In May 1781, 16-year-old Susanna Bolling from Virginia canoed and rode horseback for 10 miles through the dark of night to warn General Marquis de Lafayette of a plan to capture and kill him, Governor Thomas Jefferson, and Commander-in-Chief George Washington. Without her heroism—which is completely missing from our history books—the war likely would not have gone in the Americans' favor. Join Elissa and Libby McNamee, author of Susanna's Midnight Ride: The Girl Who Won the American Revolution, for a conversation about this brave patriot.

Though married to the fourth president, Dolley Madison was the first First Lady to embody the position as we know it today. She pretty much invented it, actually. She played an active role in her husband's administration, had a keen political sense, saved American treasures, and was the one of, if not the, most important women in the United States for decades. When she died in 1849, she was the last public figure from America's founding generation.

Remember the Ladies is taking a break for the month of September, but I'll be back with a brand new episode for Hispanic Heritage Month the first Wednesday in October.

Learn about the women of classical music—from ancient and medieval times through the present—in this interview with WETA Classical's weekday morning host, Linda Carducci.

Too long; didn't listen version of Remember the Ladies Episode 11 - Mercy Otis Warren. Here are five things you should know about this early historian, poet, playwright, and political commentator.

Living in a time when politics, history, and writing were considered men’s fields and work, Mercy Otis Warren crossed gender boundaries to insert herself into the fray of each. Her name has been somewhat forgotten over time. But Thomas Jefferson said she had a “high station in the ranks of genius.” John Adams called her “the most accomplished lady in America.” And Alexander Hamilton claimed that, “in the career of dramatic compositions at least, female genius has outstripped the male.”

Too long; didn't listen version of Remember the Ladies Episode 10 - Pauli Murray. Here are five things you should know about this groundbreaking activist, lawyer, legal scholar, and more.

Activist, lawyer, legal scholar, writer, poet, and much more, Pauli Murray, was the mind behind legal theories that led to major changes in protections for women and people of color, a friend to a First Lady and an inspiration to two pioneering Supreme Court justices, and the person who came up with the term “Jane Crow” to liken the severity of gender discrimination to that of racial discrimination.