With the impending centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment, several Washington museums are spotlighting the decades-long struggle for women’s suffrage in special exhibitions. Join tour guide Kathleen Bashian to view them and explore how the movement’s leaders and activists—as well as ordinary women—achieved that goal.

A tour of the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument, the historic Capitol Hill house that once served as the headquarters of the National Woman’s Party, provides context for the suffrage movement’s roots and its presence in Washington. Rebecca Roberts, author of Suffragists in Washington, D.C.: The 1913 Parade and the Fight for the Vote, discusses the groundbreaking event that brought the movement to a new level of public consciousness: the first civil rights march to use the nation’s capital as a backdrop.

Visits to three exhibitions expand and deepen the story of how women successfully fought for the vote, and how the legacy of the suffrage movement still resonates in American life: Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight For the Vote at the Library of Congress; Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence at the Portrait Gallery; and Rightfully Hers: American Woman and the Vote at the National Archives.

Lunch at a local restaurant is included.

This tour requires Photo ID.

No fringe stop.

NOTE: Admission and tours at the Library of Congress and the National Archives are offered free of charge.