Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner--founder and executive director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation and Center for Social Justice Dialogue; a founder of one the first college-level women’s studies programs in the United States; and author of The Women’s Suffrage Movement and Sisters in Spirit--introduces Eve and Julie to Matilda Joslyn Gage, the should-be household name of the suffrage movement whom Gloria Steinem called “the woman who was ahead of the women who were ahead of their time.” Sally has dedicated her life’s work to restoring Gage to her rightful place in history. In this episode, Sally, Eve, and Julie explore how power dynamics (in politics, in social changes movements) followed a familiar playbook in the 19th century; how Indigenous women modeled an egalitarian society for 19th century feminists; why L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz was a gender-bending, revolutionary text ahead of its time, in no small part because of Matilda Gage; and how Susan B. Anthony erased Matilda Gage’s name from the pages of history.
The Women's Suffrage Movement
“In her new book, The Women’s Suffrage Movement, the historian Sally Roesch Wagner aims to finally give a voice to the women history forgot.”
—The New York Times
Go Deeper
The Women’s Suffrage Movement, by Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner
Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation and Center for Social Justice Dialogue
Ep. 23 - “Test-driving the A.I. that Helps to Predict & Create Bestsellers” ft. Marc Acito
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
Ken Burns’ documentary, Not for Ourselves Alone
South Dakota Humanities Council
Woman, Church, and State, by Matilda Joslyn Gage
National Woman Suffrage Association
American Woman Suffrage Association