Introduction

Voices of Progress: Twenty Women Who Changed New Orleans

Since the founding of New Orleans, women have played an active role in shaping the city. The approaching tricentennial in 2018 provides an ideal opportunity for reflecting on the many women who, either collectively or as individuals, have had a positive impact on the city’s character. Voices of Progress: Twenty Women Who Changed New Orleans is part of Nola4women’s initiative to highlight the contributions of women in a series of exhibitions at museums, universities, and cultural institutions around the city.

Voices of Progress spotlights a few of the many talented women who worked to improve the city. Selected for their dedication to charitable causes, civic mindedness, and tenacious activism, the twenty women come from many different backgrounds but share a common thread in their devotion to community and service to others. From their stories emerges a timeline of women’s growing political agency. Their contributions range from the nineteenth-century campaign for child welfare, through the early twentieth-century suffrage movement, to the mid-twentieth-century fight for civil rights and equality.

The forthcoming tricentennial is a time not only for looking back but also for setting a course for the future. We invite our visitors to draw inspiration from the women featured here.