8 Tours That Celebrate Women’s History in the US

Underground Railroad organizer Harriet Tubman; first president of the American Equal Rights Association Lucretia Mott; and poet, playwright, and activist Sonia Sanchez are just a few of the historymakers with ties to Philadelphia. This tour takes you from Liberty Bell to the can’t-miss sites connected with the badass women who shaped Philly.

Get to know the unsung heroes of the civil rights movement on this tour of Nashville. Hear the empowering stories of Black women such as Diane Nash, the student leader who orchestrated the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins and led the 1961 freedom rides from Birmingham to Jackson. You’ll also learn about the modern-day women behind some of Nashville’s most successful businesses.

From suffragettes to abolitionists to madams, Charleston’s history is rich with stories of strong women who fought against social injustice. Find out about the Grimke sisters—two early leaders in the fight for women’s rights—and the enslaved women who changed the face of the city on this tour of historic Charleston.

This private tour of Washington DC’s Georgetown neighborhood looks beyond the Georgetown Set (a group of men who were at the forefront of America’s foreign policy during the Cold War) to explore the impact of the so-called Georgetown Ladies' Social Club. This group of formidable women, the wives of the Georgetown Set, are among the most influential in Washington’s history.

The former home of Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau II and LaLaurie Mansion, where socialite, slave-owner, and serial killer Marie Delphine LaLaurie resided, are two top New Orleans attractions visited on this tour that reveals the "bad broads" of the French Quarter.

Explore Santa Fe’s Plaza neighborhood on this walking tour that tells New Mexico’s history through the lens of the many pioneering women who’ve called the state home, including artist Georgia O'Keeffe and 19th-century businesswoman Doña Tules (aka Madame La Tules).

Elizabeth Van Lew, an abolitionist, unionist, and American Civil War spy; Ellen Glasgow, a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist; and Maggie Lena Walker, the first woman in the US to own a bank, are central to the narrative of this tour focused on Richmond’s trailblazers.

This Savannah women’s history tour immediately stands out for its setting: a Victorian cemetery located on a portion of the former Springfield Plantation. But it’s the pioneers buried there, and the discussions relating to those women—and of women in Victorian society in general—that will leave an even more lasting impression.