National Women’s Hall of Fame

Formed on February 20, 1969

Happy Anniversary

It’s never too late to learn something new. Today we will start with a matching quiz. In the left column are the names of the outstanding women who were  the National Women’s Hall of Fame Class of 2021. The right column lists accomplishments.

Can you match? I could not!

National Women’s Hall of Fame

Seneca Falls

A group of men and women founded the National Women’s Hall of Fame on  February 20, 1969 in Seneca Falls, New York. where Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, two renowned leaders of the US suffragette movement, organized the first Women’s Right Convention at Seneca Falls in 1848.

Showcasing great women

The Hall of Fame’s mission is, “Showcasing great women…Inspiring all!”

According to its site: National Women’s Hall of Fame is open on the 1^st floor of the historic Seneca Knitting Mill on the Seneca-Cayuga branch of the Erie Canal in Seneca Falls, New York. Our introductory exhibits are designed to show the world our vision for the future exhibits when we complete additional renovations of the Mill, celebrate Inductees, and showcase stimulating stories of past and present hard-won achievements.

Included in the introductory exhibits is a new Hall of Fame display listing our Inductees and their areas of accomplishment that visitors can browse. There is a section called “Why Here?” highlighting why all of this history happened in Seneca Falls. We tell the story of the Seneca Knitting Mill and the women who worked there. We invite visitors to delve into the history of what happens when women innovate or lead with an interactive exhibit that challenges widely-held assumptions. Visitors can “weave” themselves into the story in a participatory exhibit, and we ask visitors for their own stories of women who have inspired them. The exhibits encourage visitors to engage in creating our future and to understand the possibility of a world where women are equal partners in leadership.

National Women’s Hall of Fame

Here is an informative 2-minute introduction about the Hall by a few of the women who are members, watch the following:

National Women’s Hall of Fame

Who’s who?

Peggy McIntosh is an educational innovator, race relations and feminist activist, author, and public speaker, best known for her seminal 1989 article, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” She derived her understanding of white privilege from observing parallels with male privilege, and her work has been instrumental in introducing the dimension of privilege, or unearned power, into discussions of gender, race, sexuality, and colonialism.

Judith Plaskow is an American theologian, author, and activist known for being the first Jewish feminist theologian. She earned her doctorate from Yale University in 1975 and spent over three decades teaching Religious Studies at Manhattan College. Plaskow launched the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion in 1985 and served as the journal’s editor for its first 10 years and from 2012 to 2016. Plaskow also helped found B’not Esh, a Jewish feminist spirituality collective and served as president of the American Academy of Religion. 

Loretta J. Ross is a Black academic, feminist, and activist for reproductive justice, especially among women of color. Driven by her personal experiences as a survivor of rape and nonconsensual sterilization, Ross has dedicated her extensive career in academia and activism to reframing reproductive rights within a broader context of human rights. Over her decades of grassroots organizing and national strategic leadership, Ross has centered the voices and well-being of women of color.  

Allucquére Rosanne Stone, also known as Sandy Stone, is an academic, media theorist, author, performance artist, multi-instrumentalist, educator, and programmer. Best known for her groundbreaking 1987 essay, “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttransexual Manifesto,” Stone is considered a founder of the academic discipline of transgender studies.  She is currently Associate Professor Emerita and Founding Director of the Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab) at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also the Wolfgang Kohler Professor of Media and Performance at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Fellow of the University of California Humanities Research Institute, and Banff Centre Senior Artist. 

Anna Wessels Williams (1863-1954) was an American pathologist and pioneer in the study of immune responses to infectious diseases at the turn of the 20th century. Over the course of her research career, she worked on developing vaccines, treatments, and  diagnostic tests for many diseases, including  diphtheria,  rabies, scarlet fever, smallpox, influenza, and meningitis. Notably, Williams worked at the New York City Department of Health’s diagnostic laboratory specifically on projects that tackled  diphtheria. In her first year at the lab, she isolated a strain of the diphtheria bacillus which could be used to produce the antitoxin for diphtheria in large quantities. This fundamental discovery increased the availability of the antitoxin and cut production costs, which was crucial to controlling the devastating disease.  Within a year of Williams’ discovery, the antitoxin was being shipped to doctors in the United States. 

National Women’s Hall of Fame