Lecture Date: March 12, 2024
The Chancellor's Village Lecture
Beautiful, brilliant, charismatic, catty, and calculating, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson was a complicated figure whose personal quest for influence reshaped the position of First Lady into one of political prominence forever. And still nobody truly understands who she was. She climbed her way out of Appalachian poverty and into the highest echelons of American power and in 1919 effectively acted as the first woman president of the U.S. (before women could even vote nationwide) when her husband, Woodrow Wilson, was incapacitated. Join Rebecca Boggs Roberts, author of Untold Power: The Fascinating Rise and Complex Legacy of First Lady Edith Wilson for a frank discussion of history, power, and Edith Wilson’s legacy.
Speaker: Rebecca Roberts
Rebecca Boggs Roberts is an award-winning educator, author, and speaker, and is a leading historian of American women’s suffrage and civic participation. Her books include the award-winning The Suffragist Playbook: Your Guide to Changing the World; Suffragists in Washington, D.C.: The 1913 Parade and the Fight for the Vote; and Historic Congressional Cemetery. She is currently deputy director of events at the Library of Congress, and has previously worked as a journalist, producer, tour guide, forensic anthropologist, event planner, political consultant, jazz singer, and radio talk show host. Roberts serves on the board of the National Archives Foundation, on the Council of Advisors of the Women’s Suffrage National Monument Foundation, and on the Editorial Advisory Committee of the White House Historical Association. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, their three sons, and a long-eared hound dog.