Pamela Rouse Wright

Wright was the third generation of her family to join the Daughters of the American Revolution, as her mother and grandmother were also members. She joined the national society as a member of the Lady Washington Chapter in Houston, Texas.[1] She participated in her first Texas State Conference of the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1988.[1]

In 1999, she became the Centennial Regent of the Lady Washington Chapter.[1] In 2012, she was appointed as the State Regent of Texas.[7] Under her leadership as State Regent, the organization's membership in Texas increased to more than 18,000.[4] She was elected to national office in 2016 as the Chaplain General.[1] In 2018, Wright was elected to serve as First Vice President General and, on July 3, 2022, she was elected and installed as the 46th President General of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution.[8][9] She is the second woman from Texas to serve as President General.[10]

In January 2023, Wright personally invited Serena Ferguson, the daughter of a woman, Lena Lorraine Santos Ferguson, who was denied membership to the organization in the 1980s because of their racist policies at the time, to join the Daughters of the American Revolution and created the Lena Ferguson Scholarship to benefit students at the University of the District of Columbia.[11] Wright commissioned a memorial plaque, in honor of Lena Ferguson, that was placed in the memorial garden at DAR Constitution Hall.[11]

In March 2023, Wright unveiled a new plaque at The Old Burial Ground in Sturbridge, Massachusetts that honors sixty-four Revolutionary War patriots who are buried there.[12]

In April 2023, in her capacity as President General, Wright presented state awards to students who partook in a historical essay contest hosted by the Colonel David Hall Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Delaware.[13]

Under Wright's administration, the Daughters of the American Revolution passed an amendment to the society's bylaws in June 2023 that states the organization cannot discriminate on the basis of gender, religion, or sexual orientation.[14] The amendment was voted on at the 2023 DAR Continental Congress, which was held in Washington, D.C.,[15][16] and allows for the inclusion of transgender women as members of the organization.[14] At the congress, Jennifer Mease, a DAR delegate from the Liberty Bell Chapter in Pennsylvania, inquired whether chapters could vote against admitting transgender women on the basis of their sex even if they had changed their birth certificates to match their preferred gender identity.[14][17] Wright responded to Mease's inquiry by stating "if a person’s certified birth certificate states ‘female,’ they are eligible for membership, and your chapter cannot change that.. if their birth certificate says they are a female, and you vote against them based on their protected class, it's discrimination."[14][18][17]