America's Newest Monument Celebrates Women's Activism

In acknowledgement of Equal Pay Day—April 12, which marks how far into the new year women need to work to make as much as men earned in the previous year alone—President Obama has officially elevated D.C.’s Sewall-Belmont House and Museum to national monument status. Starting in 1929, the building served as the fifth headquarters for the National Woman’s Party, an organization historically dedicated to women’s suffrage. Since 1997, it has also served as a center for feminist education helping to inform citizens about issues of gender inequality. The announcement is a fitting one on Equal Pay Day, which also aims to educate the public about wage disparities in the U.S.

Inside the Sewall-Belmont House and Museum, visitors can browse an extensive collection of documents and artifacts pertaining to the 20th-century women’s movement. The museum also boasts the nation’s first feminist library, The Florence Bayard Hilles Feminist Library, which holds over 2,000 books, magazines, and reference works, in addition to personal scrapbooks, voting cards, letters, and telegrams.