Sally Roesch Wagner
Awarded one of the first doctorates in the country for work in women’s studies (UC Santa Cruz) and a founder of one the first college-level women’s studies programs in the United States (CSU Sacramento), Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner has taught women’s studies courses for 50 years. She has served as an adjunct faculty member in the Syracuse University Renée Crown University Honors Program. Dr. Wagner was the Founder and Executive Director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation and Center for Social Justice Dialogue in Fayetteville, New York. She passed away on June 11, 2025.
A major historian of the suffrage movement, Dr. Wagner has been active on the national scene. She appeared on the CNN Special Report: Women Represented and CNN’s Quest’s World of Wonder. She has been quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, Smithsonian, Nation and Time Magazine, among others. Her articles appeared in the New York Daily News, Ms. Magazine, the National Women’s History Alliance newsletter and National Suffrage Centennial Commission blog. She appeared in and wrote the faculty guide for the Ken Burns’ documentary, “Not for Ourselves Alone.”
A prolific author, Dr. Wagner’s anthology The Women's Suffrage Movement, with a Forward by Gloria Steinem (Penguin Classics, 2019), unfolds a new intersectional look at the 19th century woman’s rights movement. Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists (Native Voices, 2001) documents the surprisingly unrecognized authority of Native women, who inspired the suffrage movement. It was followed by her young reader’s book, We Want Equal Rights: How Suffragists Were Influenced by Native American Women (Native Voices, 2020).
Among her awards, Dr. Wagner was selected as a 2020 New York State Senate Woman of Distinction, one of “21 Leaders for the 21st Century” by Women’s E-News in 2015 and she received the Katherine Coffey Award for outstanding service to museology from the Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums in 2012.
View Sally’s work online at:
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/sally.r.wagner
GAGE FOUNDATION SOCIAL MEDIA:
Website: MatildaJoslynGage.org
Twitter: @MJGage_Center
Instagram: @mjg_center
LinkTree: MatildaJoslynGageCenter
Facebook: @matildajoslyngagecenter
View Sally’s celebration of life here.
Sally Roesch Wagner
The publication of this book coincides with the 100-year anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.
We Want Equal Rights! is the story of remarkable women who laid the foundation for the modern women’s movement and the American Indian nation that proved equality was possible. In 1850, these brave women challenged a culture that believed they were inferior to men. How did they envision such a world? They looked to their neighbors the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and saw how women were held in high regard, with even greater rights than men.
At that time in the United States, a woman was considered subservient to her husband, who gained all his wife's wealth upon marriage. Women had no claim to their children and were considered runaway slaves if they left an abusive man. In contrast, Haudenosaunee society provided a shining example of what is possible when women are treated with respect. Read how early activists forged a path to women's equal rights using the ideals of their Indian neighbors.
Feminist pioneer SALLY ROESCH WAGNER, PhD, is a nationally recognized lecturer, author, and storyteller of the history of women’s rights. A founder of one of the country’s first college women’s studies programs (California State University, Sacramento), and has taught women’s history for forty-eight years. She currently serves as adjunct faculty in the University Honors Program at Syracuse University and St. John Fisher’s Executive Leadership Program.
ISBN: 9781939053282
Author: Sally Roesch Wagner
Page Count: 48
Width: 8.00
Height: 9.50
Publication Year: 2020
Publisher: 7th Generation
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