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Biography
Edith P. Mayo (born March 18, 1940) is an American historian. She is curator emerita for political history at the National Museum of American History. Mayo is a subject matter expert on women's suffrage, specifically African American women's suffrage, and the First Ladies of the United States. She has been featured on C-SPAN, CNN, The Morning Call, The Los Angeles Times, PBS, The Baltimore Sun, and The Washington Post regarding her areas of focus. In 2020, she was named an honoree of the National Women's History Alliance.
Edith Mayo, Democracy in America: They Don't Bake Cookies, on CNN
Early life and education
Mayo earned her degree in American History from George Washington University. She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Career
Mayo was an adjunct professor at George Washington University, where she taught material culture as part of a co-branded program with the university and the Smithsonian Institution. She is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. She serves on the board of the Turning Point Suffragist Memorial. In 1995, she wrote the foreword for Doris Stevens's book Jailed for Freedom: American Women Win the Vote.
Mayo curated Rights for Women at the World Financial Center in 1998 and The Pleasure of Your Company at the Museum of Old Salem in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She curated an exhibition about women entrepreneurs, called Enterprising Women, in 2002 for the Schlesinger Library.
Smithsonian Institution
In the 1970s, Mayo was Political History Division Assistant Curator at the National Museum of American History. She eventually transitioned into the position of curator emerita, managing major exhibitions about political history, women's history and voting rights.
As curator emerita, she curated the major exhibit, From Parlor to Politics: Women and Reform in America, 1890-1925 in 1990 and in 1992 she curated the museum's major exhibition about the First Ladies of the United States: First Ladies exhibition, First Ladies: Political Role and Public Image. The exhibition toured nationally from 2004-2007.
Book
Mayo's book The Smithsonian Book of the First Ladies was published in 1996. Hillary Clinton wrote the foreword.
Recognition
In March 2015, the Fairfax County, Virginia Board of Supervisors named her an honoree for her work at the Smithsonian. In 2020, she was named an honoree by the National Women's History Alliance.
