Matilda Joslyn Gage

Born in 1826 in Cicero, New York, Matilda Joslyn Gage became one of the boldest reformers of the 19th century. She was active in the women's suffrage movement, worked for abolition, and argued tirelessly for the full civil and political equality of women.

Gage worked closely at times with leaders such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, but she often took even more radical positions than many of her peers. She criticized both church and state when she believed they upheld injustice, and she wrote extensively about women's rights, history, and the ways power can erase women's achievements.

She died in 1898, but her influence has lasted well beyond her own era. Today she is remembered not only as a suffragist, but also as an independent thinker whose ideas reached into questions of religion, Indigenous rights, and historical memory.