Marching Forth

The Schlesinger Library will digitize, catalog, and make widely available signs from the Boston Women’s March for America and the 44th annual March for Life.

On January 21, 2017, more than 200,000 women and men marched in the Boston Women’s March for America in solidarity with the Women’s March in Washington, DC, and more than 700 women’s marches around the world. Dozens of signs from the Boston and Washington marches, made and gathered by staff, students, and activists, reflect the variety of concerns addressed by marchers.

A week later, on January 27, the 44th annual March for Life, organized in opposition to the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, took place in Washington. Two of the speakers from the library’s “Righting the Record” event last October—Jennifer Marshall, a vice president of the Heritage Foundation, and Charmaine Yoest, senior fellow at the nonprofit American Values, helped us by gathering signs from the March for Life.

All of the signs will be digitized, cataloged, and made widely available so that these vivid, tangible embodiments of women’s activism in our tumultuous moment will march on.