News Release

Historian Alison Parker to Speak in Seneca Falls

Alison Parker

News Release Date: May 8, 2025

Contact: Shannon Walsh, 3152466994

Women's Rights National Historical Park invites visitors to a special presentation at 1:00pm on Saturday, May 17 in the Guntzel Theater, located within the Visitor center at 136 Fall Street. Dr. Alison Parker, author of Unceasing Militant: The LIfe of Mary Church Terrell, will discuss her research and book. Her talk will be followed by a book signing at 2:00pm.

Parker's presentation is entitled “Black Women & Voting Rights: Mary Church Terrell’s Suffrage Activism." In it, she will examine how Black women created their own brand of suffrage activism that prioritized racial justice. While claiming a place for themselves in the struggle for voting rights, they also insisted on restoring Black men’s access to the vote. Historian Alison Parker reveals new perspectives on Mary Church Terrell, a key figure in the suffrage movement. Terrell successfully advocated that Black suffragists participate equally, without being segregated, in the 1913 national suffrage march in Washington, DC. As a member of the National Woman’s Party, Terrell picketed the White House and later promoted the Equal Rights Amendment, even as she challenged NWP leader Alice Paul to adopt a more expansive, intersectional feminist perspective.

Alison M. Parker is Richards Professor of American History at the University of Delaware. She has research and teaching interests in U.S. women's and gender history, African American history, and legal history. She majored in art history and history at the University of California, Berkeley and earned a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University.

Parker's book Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell will be available for purchase in the park bookstore.

For more information about events at Women's Rights National Historical Park, visit www.nps.gov/wori.