Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall

When President Obama, in his second inaugural address, declared that the idea “that all of us are created equal is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall,” he laid out a vision of our country's fundamental progressive values, and he charted the historic journey toward a more just society marked by the signposts of women's rights, racial equality, and gay rights. Here at The Progressive Magazine, we...
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When President Obama, in his second inaugural address, declared that the idea “that all of us are created equal is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall,” he laid out a vision of our country's fundamental progressive values, and he charted the historic journey toward a more just society marked by the signposts of women's rights, racial equality, and gay rights. Here at The Progressive Magazine, we have been documenting that journey for the last 104 years. This month, we are launching a new “Hidden History” e-book series – regular installments of riveting selections from our archives. Newly digitized and fully searchable, our archives are a treasure trove of progressive history, beginning with the magazine’s founding in 1909 by Fighting Bob La Follette, who declared, “In the course of every attempt to establish or develop free government, a struggle between Special Privilege and Equal Rights in inevitable.” The Progressive documented that struggle, throughout its early, suffragist years under the guidance of Belle Case La Follette, during the great civil rights battles of the 1950s and 1960s, and with joyful declarations of gay liberation by Allen Ginsberg and Harry Hay, founder of the modern gay rights movement, who said in a Progressive interview: “We have to be people who set each other free.” We hope you find these selections, liberated from the Progressive’s archives, inspiring.