If we learned about the battle for women’s suffrage in history class, we likely didn’t learn that the fight went well beyond the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. And we definitely didn’t learn that many of the people fighting for voting rights were different from their peers in ways that we might now think of as queer. But LGBTQ+ history IS American history. Join us as we meet some of the folks who were key to winning and protecting women’s suffrage from the 19th century through the Civil Rights Era, who were gender variant or in same-sex relationships. As we meet them, we’ll talk about how we know what we know (or don’t) about their private lives and whether it matters.

Megan Springate is the National Coordinator for the National Park Service 19th Amendment Centennial Commemoration, and editor of LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History (National Park Foundation and National Park Service, 2016). An historical archaeologist by training, she received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Maryland in 2017.

Sponsored by the Library Company’s Charlotte Cushman Society.

This chat originally aired at 7:00 p.m. Thursday, October 15, 2020.