Sally Roesch Wagner

Matlida Joslyn Gage Center & Syracuse University

wasawarded one of the first doctorates in the country for work in women's studies (UC Santa Cruz) and founded one of the first college-level women's studies programs in the United States (CSU Sacramento). Dr. Wagner taught women's studies courses for 51 years. The Founder/Director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, she taught in Syracuse University's Honors Program and California State University, Sacramento's Women and Gender Studies department. A major historian of the suffrage movement, Dr. Wagner was active on the national scene. She appeared on the CNN Special Report: Women Represented and CNN's Quest's World of Wonder. She was quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, Smithsonian, Nation, and Time Magazine, among others. Her recent articles appeared in the New York Daily News, Ms. Magazine, the National Women's History Alliance newsletter, and the National Suffrage Centennial Commission blog. In March 2021, the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian featured the film "Without a Whisper," which traces Dr. Wagner's research demonstrating the Haudenosaunee influence on the suffrage movement through her friendship with Wakerakatste, the Mohawk Bear Clan Mother. She appeared in and wrote the faculty guide for Ken Burns' documentary, "Not for Ourselves Alone." A prolific author, Dr. Wagner's anthology, *The Women's Suffrage Movement*, with a Foreword by Gloria Steinem, unfolds a new intersectional look at the 19th-century women's rights movement. *Sisters in Spirit: Haudenosaunee Influence on Early American Feminists* documents the surprisingly unrecognized authority of Native women, who inspired the suffrage movement. It was followed by her young readers' book, *We Want Equal Rights: How Suffragists Were Influenced by Native American Women.* 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. Dr. Wagner passed away on June 11, 2025, at the age of 82. She was a pioneer in her field and will be sorely missed by the communities she served and those whose work she inspired.

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