Quiet Push to Recognize Suffrage Sites

Spearheaded by New York Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, powerful chair of the House Rules Committee, legislation was signed into law at the end of last month that will help celebrate the not-so-ancient history of how women won the vote in the United States.

Virtually unnoticed by the national news media, a Votes for Women History Trail in western New York has been authorized to recognize the suffragists who helped transform this country. The trail will be operated by the National Park Service (NPS) if Congress provides follow-up funding for the bill, which passed Congress in late March and was signed into law by President Obama shortly before his European trip.

A Votes for Women History Trail would create a drivable route that visits up to 20 significant sites in the suffragists' prolonged battle for the vote, from the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged in Auburn, near Syracuse, to the Waterloo and Seneca Falls sites of the first women's rights conventions, to the trail's western anchor in Rochester, the Susan B. Anthony House. Point person for the trail has been Representative Louise Slaughter, D-NY-a former chair of the congressional women's caucus-who has sponsored the bill since 2002.