Fallout

Abstract

New York City women civic activists avidly followed the Seabury investigations’ hearings and revelations. They passed resolutions demanding reform and traveled to Albany to confront legislators and urge Governor Roosevelt to take action. When the investigations’ focus turned from the women’s court to city governance, women were on the front lines of discussions of the city’s future and then helped bring a reform administration into power under the leadership of independent Republican Fiorello La Guardia. Women were thus engaged in not only the specifics of the corruption Samuel Seabury exposed but also the consequences of that exposure for New York City’s future.