The spinning wheel keeps showing up at moments of political crisis — and it’s never just about spinning. In the 1760s, American women turned spinning bees into public acts of resistance against British taxation. Arts and Crafts reformers claimed it as a rebuke to industrial capitalism. In the 1920s, Gandhi made the charkha the emblem of Indian independence from the British Empire. Twentieth-century American women, meanwhile, rediscovered it as a symbol of a revolutionary female tradition the original 1776 had denied them — decorating their homes with it, wearing the loose clothing it evoked, claiming the Daughters of Liberty as their own foremothers. But the spinning wheel casts a longer shadow: enslaved women spun and wove too, and the cotton that fed industrial production had been harvested by coerced labor for generations.

Join the San Diego History Center for another program in our America at 250 series as historian Molly McClain explores the history of the spinning wheel across three continents and 150 years to ask what commemorative culture commemorates — and who gets to decide.

Molly McClain (PhD, Yale) is a professor of history at the University of San Diego. Her research focuses on women’s history, philanthropy, and cultural history more broadly. A ninth-generation San Diegan, she is the author of four books and numerous articles, including Ellen Browning Scripps: New Money and American Philanthropy (2017). McClain’s public history work includes over a decade as editor of The Journal of San Diego History and the successful designation of the La Jolla Park Coastal Historic District to the National Register of Historic Places in 2024.

General tickets: $20
Museum Members: $10