This is all about the women in American history between the start of the New World to Reconstruction. I thought, hey, there is so much talk about the men in history, what about the women?
April 28th, 2011
Recognizing the role of women in American history (all history really) is so important because so often it is ignored. The women in history were not just wives or mothers, they were so much more. They were writers, workers, thinkers, teachers, soldiers, spies, nurses, activists, advocates, and the list could go on forever. Women were not just in the background like it may seem, they were at the forefront.
When America was colonized by the English, women had a major role in advancing the country. They had their fair share of work. That work never ended. All throughout early American history to current day and age, the role of women has been vital. The English wouldn’t have been successful in their colonization if it wasn’t for women.
Listening to the various things men have done this past semester with only one or two women put into the list made me want to learn more about what women did. It made me want to have women recognized more in American history. Especially because hey, afterall women do make up you know, half of the population. Like I said before, women were not and are not just wives and mothers. They have a story too.
April 25th, 2011
Carrie Chapman Catt
January 9, 1859 – March 9, 1947
Catt was a notable suffragette and fought for the right of women to vote. She was a woman of many accomplishments, two of those being the founder of the League of Women Voters and International Alliance of Women.
April 15th, 2011
![stfufauxminists:
[Image description: An old black and white picture of a suffragist holding a sign that reads “To ask freedom for women is not a crime, suffrage prisoners should not be treated as criminals”]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljocpaN6xx1qf3zf6o1_400.jpg)
[Image description: An old black and white picture of a suffragist holding a sign that reads “To ask freedom for women is not a crime, suffrage prisoners should not be treated as criminals”]
April 2nd, 2011
Eliza Ann Grier
Eliza Ann Grier was born a slave, but became emancipated and eventually earned her M.D., becoming in 1898 the first African American woman to practice medicine in Georgia. Little is known of Grier’s early life beyond her growing up in Atlanta. In 1883, nearly twenty years after her emancipation, Grier entered Fisk University in Nashville with the goal of becoming a teacher. She earned a degree in education from Fisk eight years later in 1891 because she took every other year off to pick cotton and perform other work to earn her tuition to continue her studies. She wrote to the Dean of the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania requesting information about tuition and the possibility of pursuing advanced medical education. The College admitted her but did not provide any financial aid, prompting her to revert to the strategy she employed at Fisk, alternately working and studying for eight years until she completed her medical degree. READ MORE »
March 31st, 2011
Margaret Fuller
(1810-1850)
Fuller was an extremely educated Transcendentalist. She was a teacher among many things. She contributed to the publication, Dial often and helped plan the transcendentalist utopian community, Brook Farm (Nathaniel Hawthorne was a resident there for a time). Fuller was most definitely a woman of many talents.
March 30th, 2011
Sarah Emma Edmonds (Franklin Thompson)
December 1841 - September 1898
Edmonds was a nurse, but she is more known for disguising herself as a Civil War soldier on the side of the Union Army. It was then that she went under the alias Franklin Thompson.
March 30th, 2011
Emily Dickinson
December 10th, 1830-May 15th, 1886
Dickinson was a beautiful poet, and also a recluse. Only ten of her poems were published in her lifetime and after she died her sister discovered them. She is now known as being a classic American poet.
“Beauty is not caused. It is.”
March 29th, 2011
Jane Addams
September 6, 1860 – May 21, 1935
Addams was the first American women to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She was a suffragist, sociologist, philosopher, president of the Woman’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and many more things.
“We have learned to say that the good must be extended to all of society before it can be held secure by any one person or class; but we have not yet learned to add to that statement, that unless all [people] and all classes contribute to a good, we cannot even be sure that it is worth having.”
March 29th, 2011
Hannah Valentine & Lethe Jackson: Slave Letters, 1837-1838
Hannah Valentine and Lethe Jackson were house slaves at Montcalm, the family home of David and Mary Campbell, located in Abingdon, Virginia. During the years David Campbell served as governor of Virginia (1837-1840), he and his family moved into the governor’s mansion in Richmond, taking several of their slaves with them, but leaving Hannah and Lethe to care for the homestead. According to historian Norma Taylor Mitchell, young men wrote these letters for Hannah Valentine and Lethe Jackson to their mistresses and other slave family members. Even if not produced by their own hands, the letters provide a rare firsthand glimpse into the lives of slaves. READ MORE »
(Source: duke.edu, via remembertheladies)
March 29th, 2011
Mary McLeod Bethune
July 10, 1875 – May 18, 1955
Bethune was a civil rights leader and an educator. She opened a school for African-American students in Daytona Beach Florida. She was also an advisor to FDR and helped him get elected.
March 29th, 2011
In History: Matilda Joslyn Gage
Suffragist, activist, author and more. Very impressive woman.
March 29th, 2011
Louisa May Alcott
November 29th, 1832 - March 6th, 1888
Alcott was best known for being an author, but she was also a Civil War nurse and for a short time, a tutor to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s daughter.
“Conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of all power is modesty.”
March 16th, 2011
Around 1608, Women were first introduced into the colonies, in Jamestown. They were brought over to pretty much be the wives of the male colonists that were already there.
(The picture is actually supposed to be set in 1630)
