D.C. Tourist Bringing Women’s History To Life

BY OMARI FOOTE

Kaitlin Calogera was a Washington D.C. tour guide for five years but said she saw a need for tours centered in telling the stories of people who didn’t have a statue in the National Mall. 

So, she opened A Tour Of Her Own to highlight women in American history. 

“Our tours are different than other tours, because we don’t only point out what’s right in front of you,” said Calogera. “We also help you unlearn history and show you what’s not there.”

In 2018, Calogera started A Tour Of Her Own, the first tourism company in D.C. to focus on women’s history. 

Tourist Lori Williamson said that A Tour of Her Own is a celebration of women’s history. 

“Kaitlin shared that one of the reasons she founded this company is to answer the question, ‘Where are the women?” Williamson said "A Tour of Her Own brings to the forefront and celebrates the stories of women from all walks of life.” 

The tours A Tour of Her Own offer a  range from personal, private, and virtual tours. Their public tour program entitled, “The Lineup,” includes four women’s history and culture events a month. 

Lindsey Horn has been a tour guide for A Tour of Her Own since 2019 and said that working with Kaitlin has completely changed how she does her job. 

“I knew that my commentary needed to be expanded to discuss women, people of color, et cetera, but even as a history major, I never paid much attention to women’s history,” she said “A Tour of Her Own changed that. I now look for and find women’s history everywhere.”

According to Calogera, a lot of tour guides are trained to shy away from talking about political topics to avoid offending anyone in their group. 

However, Calogera said that, at A Tour of Her Own, they lean into politics and current events, without particularly “choosing sides.”

“What we try to do is share relevant, historical stories and then open it up for conversation so that the people in the group have a voice,” she said. “It is their tour as much as it is ours.”

In a recent tour, Calogera said she encountered a protest about reproductive rights between a religious and queer group. As the groups approached each other with chants and opposing signs, Calogera took a temperature check and decided to make the tense situation a learning moment. 

“At that point, it’s my responsibility as a tour guide to show that this is democracy in action,” she said. 

Calogera emphasized that her job is not just to yell and point at landmarks but to understand the city that she works in. She and her team know what a rally is supposed to look like and what it's not, she said. 

Calogera said that her tour guides do not immediately turn away from conflict. Instead, they will ask for consent before proceeding into a heightened situation.

After gaining consent, they will analyze the situation. Calogera said they consider things like whether or not people are keeping respectful distances, how police are interacting with the crowd and if people are beginning to get physically violent, before approaching protests. 

“Those are all things that a tour guide has knowledge of because we know our city, we know how it functions, we know how it operates,” she said.

As Calogera looks to the future, she said she wants to expand A Tour Of Her Own to reach a broader audience. 

“Students who go to school and their books are getting banned in libraries,” she said, “They’ll never have access to what feminist history or queer history looks like unless they leave their towns.”

Her goal is to find a way to bring people who don’t have access to marginalized histories to D.C. and give them the opportunity to learn.

“What I would like to see with A Tour Of Her Own is expanding access to the most vulnerable in our communities,” she said. “I want to be able to access people who are suffering from not only a lack of education—but a deliberate attack on it.”