Voices of Progress
Twenty Women Who Changed New Orleans
Portraits of women who fought for equality, justice, and charity
Since the founding of New Orleans, women have played an active role in shaping the city.
Voices of Progress spotlights a few of the many talented women who have worked to improve New Orleans. 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.
We invite you to draw inspiration from the women featured here.