Just a few steps from the Supreme Court is the Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument. Ostensibly, it's a monument to the suffrage movement securing the right to vote for women. But the fight for equal rights didn't end with women and wasn't even really won when they got the right to vote.
The site is was only recently created in 2016. It's in the home of the National Woman's Party and is named for Alva Belmont and Alice Paul, both important figures in the NWP. The house itself is over 200 years old, but lovingly maintained. It's full of the pieces of history that played a part in the struggle from one of the jail door pins to the purple, white, and gold banners they marched with. (Special note for Junior Rangers: The jail door pin is the design for the Junior Ranger Badge.)
There aren't many visitors so we got an all-but private tour of the house. (Yeah, we've got a knack for that.) I think the girls really connected with the cause. It's easy to think about all the ways women still don't have equality (equal pay, sexual harassment, under represented in leadership positions) and all the other people that don't yet have equality in the U.S. and around the world.
What gives me hope is that it was the young that brought about change before and it will be the young that bring about change in the future. The only bummer is that some of us are impatient for that change to arrive.
