Elizabeth Selden Rogers

Elizabeth Selden White Rogers (July 23, 1868 – December 18, 1950) was a civic reformer working to improve the New York public schools, and to win suffrage for women in the state of New York and the nation.

She was born on July 23, 1868, in Astoria, Queens, New York. Her sister was Mabel Wellington White, wife of US Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, she was also the maternal granddaughter of Union Major General Amos Beebe Eaton and a descendant of Roger Sherman, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

Elizabeth Selden Rogers married John Rogers (1865-1939) in 1895. He was later at the Cornell Medical School. They had a daughter, Elizabeth Selden Rogers, who married Francis H. Horan, and two sons.

She was chairman of the Advisory Council of the National Woman's Party and its Legislative Chairman for New York, and was one of the most forceful speakers in the "Prison Special" bus tour across the country; during which suffragists spoke of their experience in jail. Rogers was arrested, as part of the Silent Sentinels protest, on July 14, 1917 for picketing in front of the United States White House, and was sentenced to sixty days in Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia; but she was quickly pardoned by US President Woodrow Wilson after just three days. .

Elizabeth Selden Rogers, editorial entitled "Why We Withdrew," in Women's Political World, 1915

A great deal is said of the value of co-operation of all societies and the economy of not duplicating work. While believing heartily in a certain amount and kind of co-operation, we are not blind to the fact that too complete unity may result. in stagnation ... The [Women's Political) Union believes that the existence of many suffrage societies is an evidence of the vitality of the movement, and that the friendly rivalry of such societies results in more and better work being done, that it gives the freedom necessary to growth, affording scope for individuality, and allowing personality to count. ... To those of our members who are worrying over this co-operate (sic) idea, we would point out that if in the past four or five years the Women's Political Union in New York City had been bound by a two-thirds vote of a campaign committee, like the one now formed, we would never have had a parade, or an outdoor meeting, or a campaign against certain enemies in the Legislature.

Elizabeth Selden White Rogers died on December 18, 1950 in New York City.