A Historian Spent 30 Years Studying Women’s History but Never Knew About Women’s Banks. One Photograph Sparked a Question and Inspired Her to Find Out More

Curator Rachel Seidman offers insight into the oral history project “We Do Declare” and how she sees oral history as a method of centering women’s voices and experiences in the historical record

Years before the oral history project We Do Declare: Women’s Voices on Independence, curator Rachel Seidman, PhD, met with Stephanie Lipscomb at National Capital Bank in Washington, DC. She noticed a photograph of Lipscomb with actress Cicely Tyson and President Barack Obama when he gave Tyson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016. Seidman asked why she had been at the ceremony, and Lipscomb explained that she and Tyson became friends in the 1980s when Tyson began banking at Washington, DC’s Women’s National Bank where Lipscomb worked. Seidman was surprised—after over 30 years of studying American women’s history, she had never heard of women’s banks.

This was a special moment for Seidman, and it served as a source of inspiration when she began planning a project at the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

We Do Declare originated as an oral history project exploring what independence has meant for women over the past 250 years. Seidman was inspired by the 50th anniversary of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) in October 2024 and decided to focus on women’s financial independence. ECOA changed women’s relationship to finance by making it illegal for banks to discriminate in lending based on sex or marital status, which made it easier for women to exercise financial independence and build their own financial power.

We Do Decare draws on the personal stories of women who contributed to and experienced a major shift in women’s financial independence over the last fifty years and explores what this has meant for their overall sense of personal freedom.

Oral History is Scholarly Research

Seidman conducted research on the history of women’s financial independence before starting the interviews. She identified women with diverse perspectives and geographical locations who participated in the legislative and social movements that reshaped women’s financial power since 1974.

“I really put on my Nancy Drew hat,” Seidman said about connecting with some of the women she identified in her research. She had identified Barbara Dudley as a potential interviewee from a scholarly article, but she could not find her on LinkedIn or other online sources. Instead, Seidman happened to come across a notice that a Barbara Dudley had given a talk at the League of Women Voters in Portland, Oregon, and, hoping it was the same woman, reached out to the League requesting Dudley’s contact information. June Inuzuka did not respond to Seidman’s emails for several weeks because she thought it was a scam. It took initiative, perseverance, and even some detective work to reach these women.

The interviews themselves are life histories. Seidman believes that you cannot understand why someone reacts to a particular problem the way that they do if you do not understand where they come from. In creating the online exhibition from the oral histories, Siedman worked hard to use the women’s own voices and stories to demonstrate their changemaker role: who they are, the challenges they faced, and how they went about solving problems. She used the recordings and transcripts to curate videos that highlight the change each woman made and their reflections on that change. The full interviews range anywhere from 90 minutes to three hours with many incredible stories and powerful moments— “It was hard to choose!” Seidman said about creating the 5-minute curated videos.

Capturing Untold Stories

Oral history shows that people are not born changemakers but have certain experiences and influences that bring them to a problem that they want to solve. It allows audiences to realize that they too have what it takes to make change by giving context to what led someone to make the changes that they did.

Oral history is a powerful methodology because it allows audiences to see and hear how people think about the challenges they faced. We Do Declare centers women’s voices in a way that sources created at the time do not by showing the changemaking process, not just the result, and by offering unique perspective and reflection on the changes that occurred because of the work these women did. For instance, June Inuzuka did not realize the widespread effects of the 1988 Women’s Business Ownership Act that she helped pass or how her work shaped the way women’s business ownership is studied today until Seidman requested an interview.

Documenting history in this way also highlights untold stories. Before We Do Declare, the full extent of these women’s contributions had not been documented in the historical record. For example, Virginia Littlejohn was a leader in the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) and a key architect of the 1988 Women’s Business Ownership Act. NAWBO worked with Congressman John LaFalce to organize hearings on Women’s Business Ownership in the late 1980s. Because Congress did not have staff expertise on the topic, NAWBO gathered the evidence, planned the hearings, and played a significant role in getting the act passed. President Reagan signed the bill into law, but NAWBO was not honored as the organization behind the act, nor were they invited to the signing.

We Do Declare gave Littlejohn the opportunity to share her experience and the role she played in advancing women’s financial power. Seidman is “proud [to] have created new historical documentation about these women as significant actors in American history.”

Seidman hopes to inspire audiences to think about the women around them and understand what it was like for them to live through these changes to financial power and independence. She wants the public to see that changemakers are just people who see a problem and find creative ways to change it.

It is important to remember, Seidman points out, that We Do Declare is only a sampling of women and their stories. She hopes that the project inspires other scholars, students, and communities to think about these concepts and document these stories. As a part of this effort, We Do Declare is an ongoing project to educate the public and inspire conversations. Educational lessons and videos are being developed, workshops are being led, and people are encouraged to uncover changemakers in their own communities. We Do Declare is just one part of the story of women’s financial independence, and there are more still waiting to be told. Explore the full collection to hear from the women themselves.

Related Reading

• What Oral Histories Reveal About Women’s Pursuit of Economic Independence
• On the Road to Independence: Field Notes from We Do Declare
• How Oral History Can Empower Women's Voices