Do We Know It When We See It? Defining Significance and Integrity in the National Women’s History Landmark Project, 1989–1993

The National Women’s History Landmark Project (NWHLP) was the most influential, concentrated effort to improve women’s history representation across the National Historic Landmarks (NHL) Program. Between 1989 and 1993, representatives of the NHL Program, Organization of American Historians (OAH), and the National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History (NCCPH) collaboratively generated 39 landmark nominations. Throughout the collaborative process, dissension emerged as project participants disagreed on how to define the two terms most integral to the NHL nomination process: “significance” and “integrity.” This article examines the root causes of these debates and outlines recommendations for productive academic–federal collaborative partnerships.