March is Women's History Month

The National Women's History Project has introduced this year's theme as Generations of Women Moving History Forward. Throughout the month of March we will be highlighting the honorees for March 2007 on our blog. Honorees include: authors, congresswomen, generals, civic leaders, entertainers, and women's activists. Here is the first honoree from the NWHP's website:

Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826—1898)
Women’s Rights Activist, Theorist, and Historian

Matilda Joslyn Gage was a 19th century suffragist, historian of women, newspaper editor, author and lecturer, woman's rights activist and theorist, advocate for civil rights, and abolitionist, who served as a top officer in the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) for twenty years. A committed abolitionist who opened her home as a stop on the Underground Railroad, she challenged the laws of her nation, risking arrest and imprisonment by helping fugitive slaves escape to freedom. Gage wrote about the superior position of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) women and supported treaty rights and Native sovereignty. Influenced by the Haudenosaunee egalitarian culture, she in turn influenced the utopian feminist vision of her son-in-law, L. Frank Baum, in his fourteen Oz books.

If you would like to look ahead at the rest of the honorees please visit the National Women's History Project website.