Sally Roesch Wagner
Sally Roesch Wagner was an American author, activist, lecturer and historian. Wagner is known for her work in multiple activist movements, publications and programs, as well as her lectures on history and activism.
Background
Wagner was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota on July 11, 1942, to her father, Fred Roesch a banker and son of a German Russian immigrant, and her mother, Lorraine Roesch. Wagner has described her mother as a "beautiful, creative woman who was locked into the impossibility of actualizing herself in the 1950's." In 1960, Wagner became pregnant out of high school and had no access to birth control or abortion, a fact that impacted her later activism with the Women's liberation movement. She got married immediately after that at the age of 18, and gave birth to her first child later that year. She and her husband divorced in 1965, and she raised two children on welfare while earning her degree.Wagner earned a bachelor's degree in Psychology and a masters degree from California State University, Sacramento before going on to be one of the first people in the United States to earn a doctorate degree History of Consciousness with a concentration in Women's Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1975.
Wagner died on June 11, 2025, at the age of 82.
Career and activism
The beginning of Wagner's activism began after she saw footage of a North Vietnamese mother with her napalmed baby. From there, she joined Another Mother For Peace, an anti-war not-for-profit organization and became a strong member of the anti-war movement, becoming involved with university strikes in protest of the Vietnam War and Kent State shootings. She also advocated strongly for women's liberation and held a strong position in the movement.After that, she went back to teach at her alma mater, California State University, Sacramento. There, she helped found the school's Women Studies Program and taught from the 1970s to 1981 before resigning and being hired at Mankato State University in Minnesota and working there from 1981 to 1985.
She was given a grant to study suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage from the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. From there, she became extremely interested in Gage and eventually purchased the home Gage lived in until 1898, located in Fayetteville, New York. In 2002, she turned it into the Matilda Joslyn Gage Center.
Wagner began work as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Syracuse University in 1997, teaching classes on women's suffrage and other activist history. In 2019, she published The Women's Suffrage Movement, an anthology of works about the history of women's suffrage. In this book, she discusses the political power that Indigenous women hold, the beginning of the suffrage movement, the downfalls of the Comstock Act of 1873, and much more.
In 2020, the documentary Without a Whisper: Konnón:kwe premiered, featuring Wagner and Mohawk Clan Mother Louise Herne. The documentary discusses how Indigenous women influenced the early suffragists.