THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner

July 11, 1942 – June 11, 2025

“I grew up in a culturally deprived world.”

Author, Educator, Lecturer, Activist, Historian.  Awarded one of the first doctorates in the country for work in women’s studies (UC Santa Cruz) and a founder of one the first college-level women’s studies programs in the United States (CSU Sacramento). Founder of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation and Center for Social Justice Dialogue in Fayetteville, New York. B.A. 1969 and M.A. 1974 from California State University and Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, 1978. 

Interviewed by Judy Waxman, December 2021

Photo 1. Sally Roesch Wagner with her child at a protest, circa 1970. Photo 2. Sally with Gloria Steinem who wrote the foreword for Sally Roesch Wagner’s book, The Women’s Suffrage Movement, 2019.