Women Who Changed America

They founded organizations, they sponsored legislation, they blazed trails and suffered trials. For generations, women living and working in Washington, D.C. have defied expectations and surmounted discrimination to increase equality, freedom, and prosperity for their fellow citizens. “Angel of the Battlefield” Clara Barton inspired a world-wide humanitarian movement. Dorothy Height devoted forty years to supporting African-American women and girls. Frances Perkins not only became the first woman to serve as a cabinet secretary, she was the principal architect of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. See the sites downtown and around the U.S. Capitol where they and others made their marks and follow history along Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, where thousands of suffragists first marched for equality on March 3, 1913. The walk will conclude at the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument, home to the National Women’s Party for nearly 90 years and the epicenter of the struggle for women’s rights.

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