Assistance with Women Breaking Barriers in Northeastern North Carolina Exhibit

Suffrage Parade in Washington D. C., MARCH 3, 1913

Women from North Carolina including Minnehaha “Minnie” Etheridge Brooke of Dare County helped organize the first Suffrage Parade in Washington D. C.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

Last fall, the state Department of Natural and Cultural Resources tasked the staff at MOA with developing an exhibit and programming themed around women changing the world and breaking barriers. As we began to research women in the region to highlight, we felt that the list should include women from the counties in northeastern North Carolina.

To that end, we emailed and telephoned historical societies, libraries, historians, genealogy societies, professors, county managers, and other state and private institutions to request names of women from their counties who have “broken barriers,” whether in women’s rights, activism, public service, journalism, literature, entertainment, medicine, academics, or entrepreneurship.

The result: We received more than 120 responses from the community, and local historian and MOA staff member Marjorie Berry compiled the information, which resulted in the creation of biographies, images and artifacts for our upcoming exhibition. We thank each individual and organization who assisted, and we look forward to presenting an informative exhibit, the culmination of this growing partnership, in July.