Herstory

Looking to Black and Indigenous Foremothers to Resist Erasure

PUBLISHED 7/2/2026 by

Free Black women and Indigenous women are the foremothers of generations of African Americans. Yet they remain largely absent from the official story of American freedom. Their lives, contributions and descendants have been systematically erased—from colonial records and legal classifications to public memory itself.

That erasure began in the earliest colonial records. The 1620 Virginia census recorded “four Indians in the service of several planters,” alongside 15 Negro men and 17 Negro women, reducing people to categories that obscured their identities, families and histories. Over the centuries, laws, court decisions and public institutions repeatedly reinforced that disappearance.

The best celebration of 250 years of American freedom—after the fireworks and celebrations by a newly blue-painted Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are over—could be a visit to a cool, air-conditioned archive. In the quiet, anyone can search the records for the full story, of the enslaved and freeborn, Indian and African. Anyone can defy censorship and erasure with an open mind and a pencil, no fees required. 

‘We the People’ Is America’s First Promise. Who Gets to Belong?

PUBLISHED 7/1/2026 by

For much of my life, I thought belonging was something you found: a place, a community, a passport, a home. Now I believe belonging may be something we build together. That realization took me 30 years—and not because I lacked an identity. I arrived in the United States carrying one.

The challenge was never that I did not know who I was—it was whether all of who I was could belong, all at the same time, in the same place: the daughter of a proud Nigerian father, an immigrant, an engineer, an advocate, a woman comfortable in rooms of power, and a woman excluded from systems governing her own life.

In a year commemorating the 250th anniversary of the United States, the Obama Presidential Center opened to the public on Juneteenth. Juneteenth commemorates the moment freedom reached people who had already been declared free. It is a reminder that recognition and reality do not always arrive together. Perhaps that is true of nations as well as people: that legal status and lived experience are not always the same thing. There can be a painful distance between inclusion on paper and belonging in practice.

Who is “we”? For nearly 250 years, the U.S. has been trying to write that answer since the beginning.

The question now is whether we are brave enough to build a version of “we” large enough for people to bring all of who they are into the future we share.

The Equal Rights Amendment and the First Amendment: A Roadmap for a Feminist Future

PUBLISHED 7/1/2026 by

Donald Trump’s jingoistic whitewashing of the 250th anniversary of the founding of our country will no doubt celebrate the 1773 Boston Tea Party, where the Sons of Liberty protested oppressive British import taxes. But throughout American history, women activists—the Daughters of Liberty to suffragists, journalists and civil rights advocates—have been making patriarchal governments tremble, by taking full advantage of the precious rights protected by the First Amendment: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. 

That same spirit must now drive the final push to secure the Equal Rights Amendment. Although the ERA has been ratified by the required 38 states, it has yet to be officially recognized as part of the Constitution.

The First Amendment gives us the tools to change that: by speaking out, organizing, protesting and demanding that elected leaders make constitutional equality a national priority.

No Equality Without Paid Leave

PUBLISHED 6/18/2026 by

The U.S. remains one of the only wealthy nations without a national paid leave program.

That failure has profound consequences for women’s economic security, caregiving responsibilities and ability to participate fully in public life: Every day, workers are forced to choose between caring for a new baby, recovering from illness or supporting a loved one and keeping a paycheck. Those impossible choices fall disproportionately on women, reinforcing gender inequities at work, at home and in civic life.

Paid leave is not simply a workplace benefit; it is a cornerstone of a more equitable democracy. When women are pushed out of the workforce, lose income or shoulder the overwhelming burden of unpaid care, they have less time, fewer resources and fewer opportunities to participate in their communities and shape public life.

Change is possible. States across the country have already demonstrated paid family and medical leave works, and overwhelming majorities of voters support it. If we are serious about creating a more inclusive future, guaranteeing paid leave for all workers must be part of the agenda. Women cannot be equal citizens without it.

(This is part of a new miniseries FEMINIST 250: Democracy’s Feminist Future, a special Ms. series examining the next chapter of American democracy through a feminist lens. As the nation approaches its 250th anniversary, the series explores how women and marginalized communities have shaped democratic progress, what lessons history offers for the challenges ahead, and how a more inclusive, representative and equitable democracy can be built for the next 250 years.)

Join Ms. Magazine and Get Our Landmark FEMINIST 250 Print Issue for This Pivotal Moment in American History

PUBLISHED 6/16/2026 by

As the U.S. prepares to mark its 250th birthday on July 4, 2026, questions loom over the celebration: Whose America gets remembered, whose gets erased—and how do we imagine and build a democracy that includes all of us? 

In the Summer issue of Ms., we revisit the nation’s founding through a feminist lens, reclaiming the stories too often left out of the official narrative: women who challenged the authors of the Declaration of Independence and later the U.S. Constitution for deliberately writing women out of America’s founding documents, Black women who resisted oppression from the start, Indigenous societies built around women-led governance, queer lives in revolutionary America, Asian women’s struggles for belonging and the long fight to make disability visible in our history.

We also look back at 54 years of feminist reporting from the pages of Ms.—proof that the battles for bodily autonomy, equality and democracy did not begin yesterday—and forward to the bold new ideas that could shape a freer, fairer future for the next 250 years.

Get a year of Ms. for just $20 (a 43 percent discount off our usual price) when you join today!

Whose America Turns 250? Democracy Is Still a Feminist Fight

PUBLISHED 6/13/2026 by

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, we face a fundamental question: Whose America are we celebrating?

From the unfinished promise of the Equal Rights Amendment, to the fall of Roe v. Wade, the story of American democracy has always been intertwined with the struggle for women’s equality.

Women—especially Black women—have long been among democracy’s most engaged participants, yet the institutions meant to represent the people continue to fall short of reflecting the nation’s diversity, needs and aspirations.

The erosion of reproductive freedom, voting rights and representative government are not separate crises; they are connected symptoms of a democracy that remains incomplete. Anti-democratic forces have repeatedly overridden popular will, making it harder to achieve broadly supported policies that would improve the lives of women and families. The fight for gender equality, bodily autonomy and political power is inseparable from the fight to build a democracy that truly works for everyone.

That conviction is at the heart of FEMINIST 250: Democracy’s Feminist Future, which begins at Ms. Thursday, June 18.

Through essays from leading advocates, organizers and thinkers—including LaTosha Brown, Skye Perryman, Reshma Saujani and Inimai Chettiar—the series offers bold ideas for strengthening democratic institutions, advancing equality and creating a more inclusive future.

Taken together, these essays remind us that democracy remains a feminist project—and that the next chapter of the American experiment is still ours to write.

Keeping Score: Threats Against Abortion Clinics Doubled in 2025; Sounding the Alarm on ‘Horrible Conditions’ of Delaney Immigration Center; Pride Celebrations Around the U.S.

PUBLISHED 6/10/2026 by

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week:
—”Trump only seems to have the capability to fire female secretaries,” observes AOC.
—Two-thirds of abortion clinics reported violence or harassment in 2025.
—The TAKE IT DOWN Act (Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks Act) took effect last month. It requires social media sites to take down non-consensual sexual imagery within 48 hours.
—Members of Congress visited the Delaney Hall Immigration Detention Center after detainees started a hunger strike to protest inhumane conditions.
—The Trump administration announced an investigation into E. Jean Carroll, who Trump sexually abused and defamed.
—Harvey Weinstein’s New York rape trial resulted in another mistrial.
—A North Carolina bill would allow deadly force against patients seeking abortion care.
—Healthcare premiums have skyrocketed, forcing 21 percent of HealthCare.gov enrollees to lose coverage.
—Women freelancers charge an average of 19 percent less per hour than men.
—Americans are struggling to access disability benefits after cuts to the Social Security Administration.
—Social media platforms are enabling anti-LGBTQ hate and censorship.
—Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) reintroduced the Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act to ban the death penalty at the federal level. Last month, the DOJ announced they would bring back firing squads and potentially electrocution and lethal gas for executions.
—A comprehensive calendar shows all the Pride parades this month, across the country and globe.

… and more.

My Women’s Studies Department Is Closing. The Need for Feminist History Isn’t.

PUBLISHED 6/9/2026 by

In August, the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas at Austin will close. I joined the department last year after leaving the University of Iowa’s Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies department, which also closed this year. As programs in women’s studies, ethnic studies and Black studies disappear across the country, I’ve found myself reflecting on how I became a feminist historian—and why this work matters now more than ever.

Back in 2005, as an undergraduate student at San Francisco State University, I took a course on feminist activists and read Angela Davis’ Women, Race, and Class. Davis argued that the experiences of Black women could only be understood through the intersecting forces of race, gender and class—and that confronting racism, misogyny and poverty was essential to liberation. From that moment, I knew a feminist view of history could transform how I understood present-day inequality and how I wanted to teach those ideas to future students.

For years, I brought that framework into the classroom, helping students connect the histories of voting rights, reproductive justice, racial discrimination and gendered violence to the challenges they see unfolding around them today. As feminist studies and ethnic studies programs come under increasing attack, I remain convinced that this work is indispensable. Nearly 45 years after Davis historicized the triad of women, race and class, we still need that critical lens to understand our world—and to defend human dignity and justice within it.

Feminist Lessons from the 2000s: The Power of a Feminist Majority

PUBLISHED 6/9/2026 by

The 2000s opened with a contradiction: Feminist ideas had never been more popular—polls found that overwhelming majorities of women and substantial majorities of men agreed with the basic definition of feminism—yet conservatives controlled Washington and were steadily advancing restrictions on reproductive freedom.

George W. Bush entered the White House and immediately reinstated the global gag rule. Congress passed the first federal abortion ban since Roe v. Wade. Abstinence-only sex education received a flood of federal funding. And feminists watched nervously as Bush filled Supreme Court vacancies, aware that the future of abortion rights could hinge on those appointments.

Meanwhile, Ms. and the Feminist Majority Foundation joined forces, combining journalism and organizing at a moment when both would be needed.

The human consequences of these policies were impossible to ignore. Women like Martha Mendoza, who lost a wanted pregnancy at 19 weeks, found themselves trapped by abortion restrictions that limited doctors’ ability to provide care.

At the same time, feminists were building one of the largest movements in the country. In April 2004, more than 1 million people flooded the National Mall for the March for Women’s Lives, carrying signs, chanting “This is what democracy looks like!” and demanding protection for reproductive freedom.

Two years later, Ms. revived its historic “We Have Had Abortions” petition, first published in 1972, gathering hundreds of new signatures in defiance of mounting attacks on abortion rights.

Yet the decade also demonstrated the power of a movement that had become a cultural majority. Feminists helped secure over-the-counter access to emergency contraception, elected the first woman Speaker of the House in Nancy Pelosi, and delivered a decisive gender gap victory for Barack Obama in 2008.

By the end of the decade, the White House had once again rescinded the global gag rule and expanded support for reproductive healthcare.

The lesson of the 2000s is that public support alone is not enough—but it matters. Even when political institutions lag behind public opinion, a determined majority can organize, mobilize and lay the groundwork for transformative change.

This essay is part of Feminist Lessons—part 2 of Ms.’ our three-part FEMINIST 250 project—which explores what each decade of modern feminist history can teach us about power, democracy, backlash and social change.

Feminist Lessons From the 1990s: How Women Became a Political Force

PUBLISHED 6/9/2026 by

The 1990s began with feminists determined not to surrender the ground they had fought for in the Reagan era—and almost immediately, the stakes became impossible to ignore.

In October 1991, millions of Americans watched Anita Hill testify before an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee about sexual harassment allegations against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Outside the hearing room, seven women members of Congress marched to the Senate in protest. Inside living rooms across the country, conversations about workplace harassment that had long been dismissed or ignored suddenly became national news.

When Thomas was confirmed anyway, many women responded not with resignation, but with political action.

The result was the 1992 “Year of the Woman.” At the start of the decade, only two women served in the U.S. Senate. Then voters elected four new women senators in a single election cycle, including Carol Moseley Braun, the first Black woman ever elected to the Senate. Women candidates flooded congressional races, and women voters helped decide the presidential election.

Once in office, this new generation of lawmakers translated representation into policy, championing landmark legislation including the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Violence Against Women Act and the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.

Women also won expanded investments in women’s health and services for survivors of violence, while Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined the Supreme Court and women entered Cabinet positions in unprecedented numbers.

Yet the decade’s gains unfolded alongside mounting threats. Antiabortion violence escalated, with clinic bombings, arsons and murders targeting providers and staff. Conservative media figures like Rush Limbaugh built audiences by mainstreaming misogyny and resentment, helping create the foundation for today’s right-wing media ecosystem.

But despite those forces, feminism entered the mainstream: By the mid-1990s, large majorities of both women and men identified with feminist values.

The lesson of the 1990s is that political power matters. When women organize, vote, run for office and govern, they do more than change who holds power—they change what government can accomplish.

This essay is part of Feminist Lessons—part 2 of Ms.’ our three-part FEMINIST 250 project—which explores what each decade of modern feminist history can teach us about power, democracy, backlash and social change.