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Since when is like a girl an insult?

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From an 80-year-old tiger trainer to the motorcycle queen of Miami, these are the stories of trailblazing women you likely didn't learn about in school.

Credit... Photo Illustration by Jessica White/The New York Times; Ann Ferrar; Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture; Cinema Libre Studio; Alamy; Joseph C. Towler, Jr.; George Rinhart/Corbis, via Getty Images; Paul J. Sutton/DUOMO/PCN

Harriet Tubman. Susan B. Anthony. Amelia Earhart.

These are women whose stories you know. But what about Bessie Stringfield, Milicent Patrick or Claudette Colvin?

Researchers have estimated that women's stories make up just 0.5 percent of recorded history. For Women's History Month, we wanted to highlight the lives and legacies of women whose names and stories you may not have learned about in school - but who nonetheless left indelible marks on society.

Head over to Instagram for more.

Nicknamed "Tiger Girl" and "Crazy Mabel," Mabel Stark was among the most celebrated animal trainers in a field dominated by men in the early 20th century. She performed with tigers until she was nearly 80, her 5-foot-3, 100-pound body covered with more than 700 stitches from being bitten, gouged and clawed (though she never blamed her tigers for the maulings). [ Read her story]

Nicknamed the "Motorcycle Queen of Miami," Bessie Stringfield was a dispatch rider for the United States Army in the 1940s - at a time when motorcycle riding was considered "unladylike." When other women were relegated to housework, Stringfield revved and roared through Florida's palm-tree-lined streets on her Harley-Davidson, sharing stories with friends of being chased off the road in the Jim Crow South and doing carnival stunts on the Wall of Death. Today, hundreds of women motorcyclists make an annual cross-country trek in her honor. [ Read her story]

Seventeen-year-old Jackie Mitchell struck out baseball giants Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game against the Yankees in 1931 - a feat that, to this day, leaves many critics skeptical. Mitchell was the only female pitcher signed to a professional baseball team at the time. But after the upset against the Yankees, it is believed that the baseball commissioner voided her contract, perhaps embarrassed by the episode. It would be another nine years before the creation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. [ Read her story]

When she first signed up for the New York City Marathon in 1975 - five years after its inception - Michiko "Miki" Gorman was an unlikely candidate to win. She was already 40, considered old for an elite runner, and had given birth to a daughter at the start of the year. She came in second that year, but raced again in 1976 and won. She won again the next year - becoming the only woman known to have won the New York City and Boston marathons twice. [ Read her story]
Alison Hargreaves

In 1995, Alison Hargreaves became the first woman to conquer Mount Everest alone, without bottled oxygen or the help of Sherpas. When she reached the peak - 29,029 feet high - she sent a radio message to her son and daughter: "To Tom and Kate, my dear children, I am on the highest point of the world, and I love you dearly." Her homeland, Britain, rejoiced. But the celebration did not last long. She died three months later, while descending from the summit of K2 in Pakistan. [ Read her story]

In her top hat and tuxedo, Gladys Bentley belted gender-bending original blues numbers and lewd parodies of popular songs, eventually becoming 1920s Harlem royalty. By the early 1930s, Bentley was Harlem's most famous lesbian figure and among the best-known black entertainers in the United States. She was also the first prominent performer of her era to embrace a transgender identity. Her rise to fame demonstrated how liberated the Prohibition culture of the Harlem Renaissance had become. [ Read her story]

In 1952, Milicent Patrick was hired by Universal Pictures as a makeup designer for the film "Creature From the Black Lagoon," where she thought up the movie's monster, a sea creature called Gill Man who falls in love with a human. Jealous of her acclaim, Patrick's boss fired her and had her name removed from the credits, replaced with his own. Her work has inspired horror and science-fiction directors over the decades, and most recently, influenced the creature in the 2017 Oscar-winning movie "The Shape of Water." [ Read her story]

Marian Anderson became the first black singer to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in 1955 - fulfilling a childhood dream. It did not matter that, at 57 years old, she was past her vocal prime. As The Times noted in a review of her performance at the time, which was met with a standing ovation: "Men as well as women were dabbing at their eyes." She went on to sing at the inauguration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1957 and of John F. Kennedy in 1961. [ Read her story]

On her first day on the job, the taxi driver Gertrude Jeannette, believed to be the first woman to drive a cab in New York City, got in an accident - on purpose. She had pulled up to the Waldorf Astoria hotel looking for a fare, but was cut off by other taxis. "In those days (the 1940s), they didn't allow black drivers to work downtown; you had to work uptown," she later recalled. As cabbies hurled insults at her, she remained calmly in the taxi line - until another cab cut in front of her. She rear-ended him, tearing his bumper, to which the man screamed: "A woman driver! A woman driver!" [ Read her story]

Bessie Coleman in 1923. She learned how to fly in France after no pilot in the United States would give her lessons. Credit... George Rinhart/Corbis, via Getty Images

Bessie Coleman wanted to fly, but no aviation school in the United States would admit her. So she taught herself French, moved to France and became the first black woman to earn a pilot's license, in 1921. The daughter of sharecroppers, who were also of Native American descent, she was inspired by stories of the Wright brothers and World War I pilots. [ Read her story]

Isabella Goodwin, New York City's first female police detective, went undercover in 1912 to expose a bank robber who went by Eddie (The Boob) Kinsman. With that, Goodwin became known as "the best known woman sleuth in the United States." By the 1920s, she was helping to oversee the newly created Women's Bureau, which handled cases involving sex workers, runaways, truants and victims of domestic violence. Today, women detectives make up around 2 percent of New York City's 36,500-member police force. [ Read her story]
Karen Sparck Jones

Karen Sparck Jones, a pioneer of computer science who established the basis for search engines like Google, once said: "Computing is too important to be left to men." When most scientists were trying to make people use code to talk to computers, Sparck Jones taught computers to understand human language instead. [ Read her story]
Mary Allen Wilkes

Mary Allen Wilkes, one of the country's first computer programmers, wrote the software for the world's first personal computer (also known as LINC) in the 1960s. In the early days of coding, more than one in four programmers in the United States were women - and Wilkes was one of the best. She spent years poring over lines of code (many of which were handwritten because keyboards and screens were still uncommon) and writing LINC's operating system that would let a user control the computer in real time. [ Read her story]

It was on a day after school in 1955, when Claudette Colvin and her friends were asked to vacate their seats on a bus for a white passenger. While her classmates got up, Colvin, 15, refused and was escorted off by policemen - becoming the first person to be arrested for challenging Montgomery's bus segregation laws. Though she resisted unfair treatment on that Alabama bus nine months before Rosa Parks, Colvin was deemed an unsuitable face for the movement by civil rights leaders. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted over a year and was taken to the United States Supreme Court in the case of Browder v. Gayle - where the court ruled Alabama's bus segregation unconstitutional. [ Read her story]

The passage of the first anti-discrimination act in the United States can be attributed, in part, to the work of Elizabeth Peratrovich, who in the 1940s fought for equal rights for the indigenous peoples of Alaska. Peratrovich and her husband, both Tlingit natives living in segregated Alaska, worked with local government to usher in legislation that outlawed discrimination based on race. In 1945, their anti-discrimination bill was signed into law and entitled all Alaskans to "full and equal enjoyment" of public establishments. [ Read her story]
Follow @nytgender on Instagram.

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Goodbye, Women's History Month. Here Are 15 Women We Shouldn't Forget. (Published 2019)

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From an 80-year-old tiger trainer to the motorcycle queen of Miami, these are the stories of trailblazing women you likely didn't learn about in school. Harriet Tubman. Susan B. Anthony. Amelia Earhart. These are women whose stories you know. But what about Bessie Stringfield, Milicent Patrick or Claudette Colvin?

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Table of Contents

1. Why Do We Celebrate Women's History Month?

2. International Women's Day

3. Women's History Month Theme 2023

Women's History Month is a celebration of women's contributions to history, culture and society and has been observed annually in the month of March in the United States since 1987. Women's History Month 2023 will take place from Wednesday, March 1 - Friday, March 31, 2023.
WATCH: Women's History Documentaries on HISTORY Vault
Why Do We Celebrate Women's History Month?

Women's History Month is a dedicated month to reflect on the often-overlooked contributions of women to United States history. From Abigail Adams to Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth to Rosa Parks, the timeline of women's history milestones stretches back to the founding of the United States.

The actual celebration of Women's History Month grew out of a weeklong celebration of women's contributions to culture, history and society organized by the school district of Sonoma, California, in 1978. Presentations were given at dozens of schools, hundreds of students participated in a "Real Woman" essay contest and a parade was held in downtown Santa Rosa.

A few years later, the idea caught on within communities, school districts and organizations across the country. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued the first presidential proclamation declaring the week of March 8 as National Women's History Week. The U.S. Congress followed suit the next year, passing a resolution establishing a national celebration. Six years later, the National Women's History Project successfully petitioned Congress to expand the event to the entire month of March.
READ MORE: Women's History Milestones
International Women's Day

International Women's Day, a global celebration of the economic, political and social achievements of women, took place for the first time on March 8, 1911. Many countries around the world celebrate the holiday with demonstrations, educational initiatives and customs such as presenting women with gifts and flowers.

The United Nations has sponsored International Women's Day since 1975. When adopting its resolution on the observance of International Women's Day, the United Nations General Assembly cited the following reasons: "To recognize the fact that securing peace and social progress and the full enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms require the active participation, equality and development of women; and to acknowledge the contribution of women to the strengthening of international peace and security."
READ MORE: The Surprising History of International Women's Day
Women's History Month Theme 2023

The National Women's History Alliance designates a yearly theme for Women's History Month. The 2023 theme is "Celebrating Women Who Tell Our Stories." This theme recognizes "women, past and present, who have been active in all forms of media and storytelling including print, radio, TV, stage, screen, blogs, podcasts, news, and social media."
WATCH VIDEO: Women's History Month

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Why Do We Celebrate Women's History Month? International Women's Day Women's History Month Theme 2023 Women's History Month is a celebration of women's contributions to history, culture and society and has been observed annually in the month of March in the United States since 1987.

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International Women's Day 2022 theme: Break the Bias

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International Women's Day 2022 theme is 'Break the Bias' - #BreakTheBias | #IWD2022

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Newsela | Artist honors remarkable women in history with a drawing every day

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Every day since July, Tiffany Wong has painted a small watercolor of one amazing woman in history and provided background information, posting her work on Instagram.

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What does Rep. Ayanna Pressley have in common with a world champion motorcyclist, a Japanese-American sculptor and an Anglican bishop? They are among the 250 women -- and counting -- featured in a Cambridge artists Instagram project highlighting women and their contributions to history.

Every day since early July, Porter Square resident Tiffany Wong has painted a small watercolor of one woman and then shared the painting on Instagram, providing background information about each woman. Wong started the project to give more people a chance to learn about different roles of women in society and history.

We don't really get to learn about them in our school curriculum as much, Wong said. I wanted to make [womens history] more accessible and available for people so that they wouldn't have to do the research.

This month, the public will have another way to access Wongs project. March is Womens History Month, and from March 17 through March 31, Wongs original paintings from the series will be on display at Gather Here, the fiber arts studio in Inman Square.

All of the pieces together have quite the impact, said Virginia Johnson, owner of Gather Here.

Inspiration

Wongs interest in womens history started young. As a child in California, she read books about women, including scientist Barbara McClintock, physician Elizabeth Blackwell and others working in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) fields.

The idea to develop her own womens history project was inspired in part by a free course available next month through HarvardX, Harvard Universitys developer of online courses. Wong has worked at HarvardX for the past five years after receiving a masters degree in international education policy from the university. The online course, Women Making History: Ten Objects, Many Stories, will explore womens history through objects available at the Radcliffe Institutes Schlesinger Library.

The Schlesinger Library provided another inspiration for Wong. In 2018, she visited the librarys 75th-anniversary exhibit, which told womens stories through 75 documents and objects.

'Women Creating Change'

An artist since childhood, Wong decided her project would include both paintings and research about women. On July 2, she started her Instagram account, @women_creating_change, with a post on suffragist and womens rights activist Alice Paul.

The written part of the post often takes longer than the painting, Wong said. Whenever possible, she uses original sources and quotes, often referencing dissertations and other documents she researches through Harvards libraries.

For each painting, Wong makes a pencil sketch in an artists notebook and then paints with watercolors, finishing the details with a micron pen.

None of the paintings includes the womans facial features, a style that makes the paintings easier to do, Wong said, while giving people an opportunity to see themselves in the image.

I wanted something approachable, Wong said. I wanted people to feel like they could also be these people.

The project highlights both historical and contemporary figures from across the world in diverse fields, including science, arts, literature, religion, government, sports and community activism. Some local subjects have included Pressley, retired Anglican bishop Barbara Harris, longtime Harvard astronomer Annie Jump Cannon and Devah Pager, the Harvard sociologist who died in November 2018.

Sometimes Wong focuses on current news events. One of her popular posts featured Aalayah Eastmond, Tyra Hemans and Emma Gonzalez, Parkland survivors who advocate for gun control.

Other times, Wong chooses subjects she considers more obscure, only to be surprised by their popularity. Examples included Ruth Asawa, a Japanese-American sculptor, and Ana Carrasco, a Spanish world champion motorcycle racer who is pursuing a law degree.

Her subjects occasionally notice her posts. In February, Wong wrote about the career of Merritt Moore, a physicist and ballerina with an undergraduate degree from Harvard. Moore shared the post with her own Instagram followers and left a comment for Wong.

Wow!! Im so touched - thank you!! I love this!!! Moore wrote.

Womens History Month

Wong, who is also a knitter, contacted the Gather Here studio in Inman Square to ask about exhibiting her paintings.

During Black History Month in February, Johnson, the studios owner, had displayed works by African-American fiber artists. After seeing Wongs Instagram account, Johnson said she was excited to share her paintings.

Highlighting another woman in our community whos championing women is important, Johnson said.

With two women on each page, all of Wongs paintings will be on display. Johnson said the exhibit would introduce people to Wongs artwork, giving them a new source for learning about womens achievements.

Wong said she would like people to think about the diversity of women and their contributions to history and society. She also sees her project as an opportunity to encourage people not to dismiss others who might be different.

I hope that people will continue to take the time to learn about and understand each other, Wong said.

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Cambridge artist honors remarkable women in history with a drawing everyday

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What does Rep. Ayanna Pressley have in common with a world champion motorcyclist, a Japanese-American sculptor and an Anglican bishop? They are among the 250 women -- and counting -- featured in a Cambridge artist's Instagram project highlighting women and their contributions to history.

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Sam Gordon and the All Girl Football League

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Sam Gordon and the All Girl Football League

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Live long and prosper? Nichelle Nichols sure has. At the height of the American civil rights movement, she played "Star Trek's" Lieutenant Uhura-then one of television's few confident, strong Black female characters. It was a trailblazing role she nearly walked away from-until a certain legendary activist and super fan intervened. Who knew Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Trekkie?

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The Actress Who Changed Television (and NASA) Forever

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Live long and prosper? Nichelle Nichols sure has. At the height of the American civil rights movement, she played "Star Trek's" Lieutenant Uhura-then one of television's few confident, strong Black female characters. It was a trailblazing role she nearly walked away from-until a certain legendary activist and super fan intervened.

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Obituary writing is more about life than death: the last word, a testament to a human contribution.

Yet who gets remembered - and how - inherently involves judgment. To look back at the obituary archives can, therefore, be a stark lesson in how society valued various achievements and achievers.

Since 1851, The New York Times has published thousands of obituaries: of heads of state, opera singers, the inventor of Stove Top stuffing and the namer of the Slinky. The vast majority chronicled the lives of men, mostly white ones.

Charlotte Brontë wrote "Jane Eyre"; Emily Warren Roebling oversaw construction of the Brooklyn Bridge when her husband fell ill; Madhubala transfixed Bollywood; Ida B. Wells campaigned against lynching. Yet all of their deaths went unremarked in our pages, until now.

Below you'll find obituaries for these and others who left indelible marks but were nonetheless overlooked. We'll be adding to this collection each week, as Overlooked becomes a regular feature in the obituaries section, and expanding our lens beyond women.
You can use this form to nominate candidates for future "Overlooked" obits. Read an essay from our obituaries editor about how he approaches subjects and learn more about how the project came to be.

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Remarkable People We Overlooked in Our Obituaries

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Obituary writing is more about life than death: the last word, a testament to a human contribution. Yet who gets remembered - and how - inherently involves judgment. To look back at the obituary archives can, therefore, be a stark lesson in how society valued various achievements and achievers.

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¡Viva la mujer! (Women's History Month - Spanish Leveled Book)

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El Mes de la Historia de la Mujer (Español)

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Fecha: 6 de marzo de 2017

El "Mes de la historia de la mujer" fue establecido como una forma de reconocer y celebrar las contribuciones de las mujeres en los eventos históricos y en la sociedad contemporánea de Estados Unidos. Esta celebración nacional comenzó a principios de la década del ochenta cuando el Congreso aprobó varias leyes y resoluciones sobre el tema. En 1987 se declaró que marzo sería el mes de la celebración oficial del Gobierno de EE. UU. dedicado a honrar a las mujeres del país.

Año a año instituciones destacadas de Estados Unidos, entre ellas la Biblioteca del Congreso, los Archivos Nacionales y Administración de Documentos, la Galería Nacional de Arte, el Servicio de Parques Nacionales y el Instituto Smithsonian apoyan esta celebración nacional. Para más información sobre el "Mes de la historia de la mujer" puede visitar la página web de la Biblioteca del Congreso (en inglés).

Acompáñenos en la celebración de mujeres destacadas de la historia de EE. UU., algunas de ellas de origen hispano:

Sacagawea (en inglés) (1788-1812) fue una mujer bilingüe de la tribu Shoshone. Entre 1805 y 1806 acompañó la expedición "Corps of Discovery", de Lewis y Clark, que exploró desde las planicies del norte pasando por las Montañas Rocosas hasta el Océano Pacífico, travesía que incluyó el regreso. Su talento como traductora fue invaluable, al igual que su profundo conocimiento de un terreno difícil. Quizás lo más importante fue su presencia conciliadora al producirse el contacto entre los expedicionarios y los indígenas. Notablemente, Sacagawea logró todo esto mientras cuidaba a su hijo que nació solo dos meses antes de partir.

Amelia Earhart (en inglés) (1897-desaparecida en 1937) fue la primera mujer en volar sola sobre el Océano Atlántico. También estableció muchos otros récords de aviación durante su carrera.

Eleanor Roosevelt (en inglés) (1884-1962), esposa de Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), presidente de EE. UU. entre 1933 y 1945, fue una líder por su propio mérito y participó en numerosas causas humanitarias a través de su vida. Crio a cinco hijos y estuvo involucrada en la vida política del Partido Demócrata y de numerosas organizaciones de reforma social. En la Casa Blanca fue una de las primeras damas más activas de la historia y trabajó a favor de la justicia social, racial y política en el país. Tras el fallecimiento del presidente Roosevelt, Eleanor se convirtió en delegada ante las Naciones Unidas y continuó sirviendo como defensora de los derechos humanos. Participó en causas de la agenda del Partido Demócrata y fue una activa escritora hasta su fallecimiento a la edad de 78 años.

Rosa Parks (en inglés) (1913-2005) se negó a ceder su asiento a un hombre blanco en un bus público de Montgomery, Alabama en 1955. Con su acción, la costurera Rosa Parks ayudó a iniciar el movimiento de los derechos civiles en EE. UU.

Rita Moreno (1931), actriz y cantante puertorriqueña, es una de las doce artistas que han ganado los cuatro más importantes premios del mundo del espectáculo de EE. UU. (Óscar, Emmy, Grammy y Tony). Además, fue la segunda puertorriqueña en ganar un Óscar.

Ellen Ochoa (1958) se convirtió en la primera astronauta hispana en 1993. Su primera misión consistió en un viaje de nueve días a bordo del transbordador Discovery.

Sonia Sotomayor (en inglés) (1954) es la primera mujer de origen hispano en ocupar un asiento en la Corte Suprema de EE. UU. luego de que el presidente Barack Obama la nominara el 26 de mayo de 2009 y ella asumiera el puesto el 8 de agosto de ese año. Anteriormente, en 1991, el presidente George H. W. Bush había designado a Sonia Sotomayor jueza de la Corte del Distrito Sur de Nueva York, cargo que ocupó entre 1992 y 1998. Entre 1998 y 2009 fue jueza en la Corte de Apelaciones de Estados Unidos para el Segundo Circuito.

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¡Celebremos el "Mes de la historia de la mujer"! | USAGov

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Fecha: 6 de marzo de 2017 El "Mes de la historia de la mujer" fue establecido como una forma de reconocer y celebrar las contribuciones de las mujeres en los eventos históricos y en la sociedad contemporánea de Estados Unidos.

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Women's History Month: YouTube Kids Playlist Intro Video

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The Woman Who Saved the U.S. Space Race (And Other Unsung Scientists)

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PBS LEARNING MEDIA | Women's History Month | PBS KIDS

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The year 2020 will mark the 100 th anniversary of the 19 th Amendment: 100 years of women voting. Early suffragists spent years, and in some cases entire lifespans advocating for the right to vote. As we enter 2020, we will be looking back on those stories. How did suffrage activists eventually win? Why did it take them so long? Who was left out of the struggle for the vote? Through the lens of history, we are also looking forward. What rights did women still need to fight for? Whose rights need protecting today? We will be adding relevant content and program information about the 19 th Amendment leading up to and throughout 2020.

Email us your questions about 2020 or check out our Facebook for the most current information.

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2020 Centennial - Women's Rights National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)

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The year 2020 will mark the 100 th anniversary of the 19 th Amendment: 100 years of women voting. Early suffragists spent years, and in some cases entire lifespans advocating for the right to vote. As we enter 2020, we will be looking back on those stories. How did suffrage activists eventually win?

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WVCI MIssion

The missionof the 2020 Women's Vote Centennial Initiative (WVCI) is to serve as a central organizing and information-sharing entity for programs, projects, and activities that commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, educate the public on the legal and social advances resulting from the amendment, and stimulate dialogue to address the ongoing fight for women's rights.

WVCI Vision

Nearly 100 years ago, women around the US protested, picketed, and were imprisoned to secure their constitutional right to vote. Today, only 19.6% of elected officials in Congress are women, and during the 2016 presidential election, one in every three women eligible to vote did not cast a ballot. 2020 WVCI stands proudly on the shoulders of the brave and brilliant suffragists as we honor their legacy and continue the unfinished business of creating a more equal and just society.

WVCI PURPOSE

The purpose of the 2020 Women's Vote Centennial Initiative is to ensure that the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment is celebrated and commemorated throughout the United States in ways that: 1) include the influence and stories of the various components of the suffrage movement in ways that reflect the accuracy of the historical record; 2) recognize the legal and social advances resulting from the 19th Amendment; 3) acknowledge the inadequacies of the Amendment's implementation; 4) describe its continuing relevance to the ongoing struggle for equal rights; 5) encourage involvement in large and small activities at all levels by diverse public, nonprofit, and private organizations and individuals.

WVCI partners

The 2020 Women's Vote Centennial Initiative (WVCI) is a collaborative effort created to share information and stimulate activities around the country in the years leading up to 2020. We are a volunteer initiative that is composed of a broad range of groups and individuals who collectively represent various segments of the historical women's suffrage movement and contemporary women's organizations.

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The missionof the 2020 Women's Vote Centennial Initiative (WVCI) is to serve as a central organizing and information-sharing entity for programs, projects, and activities that commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, educate the public on the legal and social advances resulting from the amendment, and stimulate dialogue to address the ongoing fight for women's rights.

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We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal. . . . In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object.-Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Declaration of Sentiments, 1848

The campaign for women's voting rights lasted more than seven decades. Considered the largest reform movement in United States history, its participants believed that securing the vote was essential to achieving women's economic, social, and political equality. Culminating 100 years ago in the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the fight for women's suffrage was not for the fainthearted. Determined women organized, lobbied, paraded, petitioned, lectured, and picketed for years. Suffragists were ridiculed, patronized, and dismissed by opponents, yet they persisted. Some were assaulted and endured the harsh confines of prison for daring to claim rights equal to men, but they would not be denied.

The movement questioned the country's commitment to democracy, exposed the nation's longstanding class, regional, and racial divides, and challenged existing gender stereotypes. Arguments and strategies for and against women's suffrage varied over time and place. Proponents forged uneasy alliances and overcame countless controversies. Although few of the women who began the suffrage campaign before the Civil War lived long enough to witness its final victory in August 1920, their work was carried on by their daughters, granddaughters, and other women whom they had inspired, nurtured, and taught. Their collective story is one of courage, perseverance, savvy, creativity, and hope that continues to inspire women today. #ShallNotBeDenied

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Explore | Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote | Exhibitions at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal. . . . In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object.

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The 19th Amendment guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation. Beginning in the mid-19th century, woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote, marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered radical change.

Between 1878, when the amendment was first introduced in Congress, and 1920, when it was ratified, champions of voting rights for women worked tirelessly, but their strategies varied. Some tried to pass suffrage acts in each state-nine western states adopted woman suffrage legislation by 1912. Others challenged male-only voting laws in the courts. More public tactics included parades, silent vigils, and hunger strikes. Supporters were heckled, jailed, and sometimes physically abused.

By 1916, most of the major suffrage organizations united behind the goal of a constitutional amendment. When New York adopted woman suffrage in 1917, and President Wilson changed his position to support an amendment in 1918, the political balance began to shift.

On May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment, and two weeks later, the Senate followed. When Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment on August 18, 1920, the amendment was adopted. While decades of struggle to include African Americans and other minority women in the promise of voting rights remained, the face of the American electorate had changed forever.

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See the 19th Amendment on display in the new exhibit Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote at the National Archives Museum Enlarge House Joint Resolution 1 proposing the 19th amendment to the states View in National Archives Catalog The 19th Amendment guarantees American women the right to vote.

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View a full list of the temporary exhibitions currently on vew and our collections on permanent display.

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As the 19th Amendment turns 100, three exhibitions in Washington explore the contentious - and unfinished - struggle for voting rights.

A 1915 illustration by Henry Mayer, titled "The Awakening," suggested the geographical force behind the suffrage movement. Credit... Cornell University, The PJ Mode Collection of Persuasive Cartography

WASHINGTON - In the summer of 1919, shortly after Congress passed the 19th Amendment, the Smithsonian acquired a few relics from the nearly century-long struggle for women's suffrage.

Susan B. Anthony's red silk shawl and the table on which Elizabeth Cady Stanton had drafted the Declaration of Sentiments in 1848 were among the donated items. A year later, after the amendment was ratified by the states and became part of the Constitution, they were put on view along with some documents, teacups, brooches and other objects in a modest display bearing the offhand title "An Important Epoch in American History."

Today, there's a bit more excitement. The yearlong centennial of the 19th Amendment is being commemorated with exhibitions, parades, conferences and new historical markers across the country, many timed to various states' ratifications of the amendment. And in Washington, three major exhibitions are now open at the National Portrait Gallery, the Library of Congress and the National Archives.

Together, these shows - all curated by women - make up one of the richest explorations of women's history yet assembled in the capital, or anywhere else. But they also offer a lesson in the messiness, complexities and compromises involved in any movement for social change - and the fraught politics of historical memory itself.

For years, the drive for women's suffrage was presented mainly as the story of middle-class white women and iconic national leaders like Anthony and Stanton. That story began with the Seneca Falls Convention in upstate New York in 1848 and ended with the triumphant adoption of the amendment on Aug. 26, 1920, which resulted in the single largest extension of democratic voting rights in American history.

But in recent decades scholars have taken a less top-down view, emphasizing the movement's multiple starting points and patchwork progress through hundreds of state and local campaigns. They have also excavated the role of African-American women, who were largely excluded from the major, white-led suffrage organizations and marginalized in the early histories of the movement, if they were mentioned at all.

Even before the centennial year began, there have been tensions over who and what to celebrate - or even how to sum up the amendment's significance.

Did it grant the vote to women? Not exactly. Before 1920, 15 states, mainly in the West, already had full female suffrage, while others granted women partial voting rights.

And after the amendment, which declared only that states could not discriminate in voting based on sex, millions of women of color were still barred from the polls. Most African-American women in the South, like African-American men, were blocked by poll taxes, literacy tests and other racial barriers, while Native Americans and Asian immigrants were largely excluded from citizenship entirely.

"It's important to remember how piecemeal a struggle it was," said Robyn Muncy, a historian at the University of Maryland, and one of the curators of the National Archives exhibition. "Seeing change as coming in one fell swoop undermines us as citizens, and gives us a false idea about the way change happens."

The three exhibitions each aim to cover the whole story, but with subtly different emphases and timelines.

"Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote," at the Library of Congress through September 2020, emphasizes the movement's core narrative, from its beginnings in abolitionism to the campaigns of the 1910s, when suffragists became the first Americans to regularly protest outside the White House.

On view are items relating to key leaders, from Anthony's annotated personal copy of Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" to the notebook in which Carrie Chapman Catt, Anthony's successor as president of the National American Woman's Suffrage Association, tracked the amendment's state-by-state ratification in 1919-1920.

But the show also traces how the fight for suffrage became a mass movement in the early 20th century, advocated and advertised via sheet music, tote bags, buttons, souvenir fans, even suffrage cookbooks.

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Suffragists protesting at the White House in 1918. The National Portrait Gallery, the Library of Congress and the National Archives have exhibitions that look at the struggle. Credit... National Archives, Records of the U.S. Information Agency

"That was one of the more fun things to research," Janice Ruth, the lead curator, said in an interview. "It revealed their cleverness, astuteness and doggedness, along with the desire and need to raise money."

Stories of African-American women and other women of color are woven into the narrative at the library. But the desire to tell a more inclusive story is front and center in "Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence," at the National Portrait Gallery until Jan. 5, 2020.

The exhibition is a sprawling consideration of more than a century of history, but its core is an assemblage of portraits of nearly 60 named women's rights activists, a third of whom are women of color. To assemble the group, the gallery had to reach beyond its own collections, which are disproportionately white and male. (It's a bias the gallery is trying to counter with a policy requiring that half of all new acquisitions diversify the collection in some way.)

Small portraits of Anthony and Stanton are in a central case in the main gallery, along with a portrait of Sojourner Truth. Yet equal weight is given to the lesser-known women lining the walls, like the African-American poet and activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, who at an 1866 meeting of the National Women's Rights Convention, rose to challenge Stanton and Anthony, who later opposed the 15th Amendment, which enfranchised black men but omitted women.

A portrait of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, circa 1870. Credit... National Woman's Party Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress

"I do not believe that giving the woman the ballot is immediately going to cure all the ills of life," Harper declared.

This exhibition, part of the Smithsonian's American Women's History Initiative, emphasizes that it took the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to make the promise of the 19th Amendment a reality for African-American women.

That law "is the true conclusion," said Kate Lemay, the exhibition's curator. "You can't think of women's rights and say, 'The 19th Amendment, the end!'"

The piecemeal, partial progress of women's suffrage history is also emphasized in "Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote," at the National Archives through Jan. 3, 2021. It's embodied vividly in one of the odder items on view: 1910 patent drawings for a Rube Goldberg-like voting booth with separate entrances for men and women, which displayed different ballots according to which entrance was used, so that women in states with partial suffrage could only vote in certain contests.

The exhibition, which Dr. Muncy curated with Corinne Porter, a National Archives curator,makes clear how that earlier voting by women mattered politically, giving steam to the movement. As women gained votes in more states, support for the 19th Amendment grew in Congress.

Grand Marshal Jane Walker Burleson (center, on horseback) leading a suffrage march on March 13, 1913, in Washington. Credit... Bain News Service; Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

But the show does not neglect fractures within the movement. A wall mural about the 1913 Women's Suffrage Parade, sometimes called the first peaceful march on Washington, relates how the journalist and suffrage advocate Ida B. Wells famously defied the organizers' demand that black women march in the back.

And it also highlights figures like Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin, a Chippewa law student who marched in the Washington parade, and Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, a Chinese immigrant who as a teenager helped lead a 1912 suffrage parade in New York on horseback, despite being ineligible for citizenship under the Chinese Exclusion Act. (The act was repealed in 1943.)

Like the others, the National Archive show covers some little-known chapters in suffrage history, such as the case of Puerto Rico, which, as a territory, was not covered by the 19th Amendment. Its government remained free to discriminate on the basis of sex, which it did, waiting until 1929 to enfranchise literate women - and until 1935 for all women.

A campaign poster for Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color elected to Congress. Credit... Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives

Each show cites different starting points for the suffrage movement, which has been a source of debate among scholars. They also have different solutions to an even more fraught problem, given today's polarized political climate: how to end?

The Library of Congress show concludes with a six-minute video showing clips of a carefully bipartisan selection of female political "firsts," including Shirley Chisholm (the first African-American woman in Congress), Geraldine Ferraro (first female vice-presidential candidate) and Sarah Palin (first female Republican vice-presidential nominee).

The portrait gallery takes a more citizen's-eye view, ending with a portrait of the civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, opposite a QR code that lets visitors to connect via smartphone to online information about voter registration.

At the National Archives, the curators push the farthest into the present, touching on issues about access and equality that remain raw and unsettled today.

There is discussion of the 1975 amendment to the Voting Rights Act requiring that ballots be offered in languages other than English. And there's a displayhighlighting Ruth Bader Ginsburg's scathing dissent in the 2013 Supreme Court decision Shelby County v. Holder, which invalidated central portions of the act.

Dr. Muncy said it was important to see the 19th Amendment not as a triumphant culmination, but one landmark in a struggle for equal rights for all citizens that isn't over yet.

"Today, there are actions both to expand and to limit the franchise at the state level everywhere," she said. "That is part of the story of women's suffrage too."
Shall Not Be Denied: Women Fight for the Vote
Through September 2020 at the Library of Congress, 101 Independence Avenue, SE, Washington; 202-707-5000, loc.gov.
Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence
Through Jan. 5, 2020, at the National Portrait Gallery, Eighth and F Streets, NW, Washington; 202-633-8300, npg.si.edu.
Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote
Through Jan. 3, 2021, at the National Archives Museum, 701 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington; 202-357-5000, museum.archives.gov.

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The Complex History of the Women's Suffrage Movement (Published 2019)

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As the 19th Amendment turns 100, three exhibitions in Washington explore the contentious - and unfinished - struggle for voting rights. WASHINGTON - In the summer of 1919, shortly after Congress passed the 19th Amendment, the Smithsonian acquired a few relics from the nearly century-long struggle for women's suffrage. Susan B.

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Declaration of Sentiments: 1848/Seneca Falls 

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Declaration of Sentiments: 1848/Seneca Falls 

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In 2015, the Obama White House put out a call to amateur historians to search their attics and archives for a relic of women's history: the original, signed copy of the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions from the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention ¹ in New York, one of the nation's first organized events for women's rights.

Back then, about 300 people gathered for the two day convention in upstate New York and more than 100 women and men signed the manifesto, declaring it time for women to claim their rights in society. One, albeit low down on the list, was the right to vote.

The search yielded a few clues, but no manuscript with either notes in the margin or signatures at the end.

"We found nothing except a couple of bread crumbs," David Ferriero, the national archivist of the United States said.

The Trump White House abandoned the project, which was started by Megan Smith, then the United States chief technological officer under President Obama. But Ms. Smith, who is now the chief executive of a digital technology company, S hift7, plans to continue the search, using the hashtag #FindTheSentiments.

Next year marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment ⁵. In this #MeToo era, with women lawmakers appearing at the State of the Union wearing white in solidarity with suffrage and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi battling with President Trump, the defiant declarations of long ago have never seemed so relevant.

"A campaign to find the original Declaration of Sentiments, to my mind, is not just a campaign to get the document," Donna Lieberman, the director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said. "It's a campaign to raise public awareness of what those documents said and their place in history."

She added: "Our national history of inequality is something that we have yet to succeed in getting rid of. We're still living with the long term effects of inequality; that's true for women, for black people. You go back and read this, it just hits you over the head once again."

A declaration for women

The Founding Fathers had been warned. " Remember the Ladies," Abigail Adams ⁶ wrote to her husband, and future president, John, during the Revolutionary War before the men went on to pen their Declaration of Independence. And left out the ladies.

The Declaration of Sentiments writes them back into history, mimicking the preamble with one addition:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

It went on to accuse men of "repeated injuries and usurpations" against women, including depriving them of having the right to vote, of equal wages, of access to professions like law and medicine; denying them marital property rights or the ease to divorce; and of restricting women's ability to attend the same universities as men.

The last sentiment in the declaration accuses men of destroying women's confidence.

"The final sentiment is an especially significant find, especially for me reflecting on the deep systemic race, gender and class bias of Silicon Valley, where I spent much of my career," Ms. Smith said.

Woman is man's equal. And the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such.

At the time, it was a revolutionary idea without much immediate impact, said Martha Saxton, a professor emeritus of women's history at Amherst College.

"There were only about seven people interested in women's suffrage at the time," she said. "It was not a popular issue."

After a debate among the women, the right to vote ended up No. 9 on a list of 11 resolutions, the only resolution that was not unanimous.

Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.

Newspaper columns and sermons responded with venom and disdain that foreshadowed the social media age. Editorials screamed headlines like "The Reign of the Petticoats," and "Insurrection Among the Women." The Mechanic's Advocate called the convention "unwomanly," the reforms "unnecessary." The Worcester Telegram referred to women as "Amazons," who were "bolting with a vengeance."

In her book, "Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences 1815-1897," Stanton wrote that she and her colleagues were shocked by the blowback:

"No words could express what seemed to us so timely, so rational, and so sacred, should be a subject for sarcasm and ridicule to the entire press of the nation."

In September 1848, following the Rochester Convention, Stanton forcefully reflected on the ridiculousness of being excluded:

"To have the rights of drunkards, idiots, horse-racing, rum selling rowdies, ignorant foreigners, and silly boys fully recognized, whilst we ourselves are thrust out from all the rights that belong to citizens - it is too grossly insulting to the dignity of woman to be longer quietly submitted to. The right is ours, have it we must - use it we will."

While the Declaration was meant to be inclusive, no African-American women were believed to have attended the convention in Seneca Falls.

Scholars point to feminism's earlier influences like the Antislavery Convention of American Women of 1837 ¹⁰ in New York City, where black, white and Native American women attended. The role of black women in the feminist movement is a controversy still unfolding.

The hunt for a 'sacred object'

A scholar of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ann D. Gordon, wrote a blog post in 2015 criticizing the search for the declaration as "Megan Smith's romantic quest for something truer or more authentic."

In fact, other historians see Ms. Smith's public search as a Quixotic quest because the content of the Declaration of Sentiments is widely available.

Ms. Gordon, a research professor emerita at Rutgers University, where she edited the papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, said Ms. Smith in her search had treated the manuscript, itself, as a prize.

"I don't know that the sacred object matters more than what it said," Ms. Gordon said. "That somehow, if we don't have it handwritten, with the signatures, that there's something less revealing about it."

She believes that the sought-after document never existed. Instead, the manuscript was more likely to be a collection of notes on several pages that were brought to printing press of Frederick Douglass ¹²'s North Star newspaper ¹³ in Rochester, N.Y. The abolitionist, who also attended the convention and signed the document, had the declaration published as a pamphlet.

In those days, Ms. Gordon said, it was rare that originals came out of the print shop.

¹⁴ FIRE IN ROCHESTER. The New York Times reported on the fire in Douglass's home, and his family's narrow escape, on June 6, 1872.

Lisa Tetrault, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University credited Ms. Gordon for her 40-year exhaustive search for all documents by Stanton and Anthony. "If it were to be found, she'd have found it," Ms. Tetrault said in an email.

Archivists like Thomas Ruller, from New York State, defended the search for the manuscript.

"There is something special and unique about original documents, handled by their creators, showing their edits and corrections," Mr. Ruller said.

For Ms. Gordon, the renewed attention on a document that is lesser known in American history has served as a reminder of the never-ending fight for women's rights.

"Maybe what we learn is that this generation of women could think a whole lot of it through and lay down some rules," she said, "and then we only later discovered how hard it would be to implement that."

Produced by Andrew Hinderaker, Rebecca Lieberman, Meghan Louttit and Eden Weingart.

Top images, from left: Cover of The North Star; portraits of Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton from The Library of Congress.

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Early Feminists Issued a Declaration of Independence. Where Is It Now? (Published 2019)

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In 2015, the Obama White House put out a call to amateur historians to search their attics and archives for a relic of women's history: the original, signed copy of the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions from the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention 1 in New York, one of the nation's first organized events for women's rights.

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Explore the intersection of race, gender, and the suffragist movement

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Figure 3. Ida B. Wells, c. 1891. Illustration from I. Garland Penn, The Afro-American Press and Its Editors (Springfield, MA: Willey & Co., 1891). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Despite all this important work by Black suffragists, the mainstream suffrage movement continued its racially discriminatory practices and even condoned white supremacist ideologies in order to garner southern support for white women's voting rights. Consequently, African American women and men became increasingly marginalized and discriminated against at woman suffrage meetings, campaigns, and marches. Even after the NWSA and the AWSA reconciled to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) in 1890, Anthony and other white suffragists in the South and the North continued to choose expediency over loyalty and justice when it came to Black suffragists. In 1895, Anthony asked her "friend" and veteran woman suffrage supporter Frederick Douglass not to attend the upcoming NAWSA convention in Atlanta. As she later explained to , Douglass's presence on the stage with the honored guests would have offended the southern hosts. Wells-Barnett and other suffragists reprimanded Anthony and other white women activists for giving in to racial prejudice. During the 1903 NAWSA meeting in New Orleans, the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Times Democrat denounced the organization's anti-Black states' rights strategy for its negative impact on Black women's quest for suffrage.

There were exceptions to the discriminatory traditions among suffragists. In New England, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin claimed she had been warmly welcomed by Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, and others. Some African American women, such as internationally prominent women's rights activists and speaker , belonged to and participated in NAWSA meetings and activities, even as the new organization discriminated against them to woo southern and white male support for woman suffrage. (Figure 2) Mary Church Terrell

In the closing decades of the nineteenth century more Black women formed their own local and regional woman suffrage clubs and, in 1896, the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). The NACW, which elected Terrell as it first national president, provided Black women a national platform to advocate for woman suffrage and women's rights causes. From the organization's inception and throughout the twentieth century, Terrell, Ruffin, Barrier Williams, Wells-Barnett, and numerous NACW members and leaders fought for woman suffrage, sharing their pro-suffrage sentiments and activities at regional and national NACW conventions and in the white and Black press.

Despite the discrimination Black women experienced, including the rejection of Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin's effort to represent the NACW in the General Federation of Women's Clubs, Black women cautiously joined interracial efforts to secure the ballot for women and to expand women's engagement in electoral politics as canvassers, organizers, and voters. Prominent anti-lynching activist, NACW member, and suffragist Ida B. Wells-Barnett organized, in 1913, the first Black woman suffrage club in Illinois, the Chicago-based Alpha Suffrage Club. (Figure 3) She and other midwestern women participated in nonpartisan NACW, NAWSA, and Alpha Club campaigns and political rallies; most Black women, however, also supported Republican Party platforms and candidates.

As the suffrage movement moved into its final phase in the early decades of the twentieth century, local and national white woman suffrage organizations claimed racial inclusivity and did have African American women as active members, but the actions and policy statements of their leaders reflected a very different racial reality-one that worsened over time. When Alice Paul, founder of the National Woman's Party, organized a woman suffrage parade in 1913, scheduled a day before the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, the first US president from the South, her accommodating acquiescence to white racism typified the worsening racial climate within the suffrage movement. Prior to the parade, Wells-Barnett, representing the Alpha Suffrage Club, was asked to march at the rear of the parade rather than with the white Chicago delegation. In keeping with her resistant and radical personality, Wells-Barnett refused to join her fellow Black suffragists at the rear. Instead, as the all-white Chicago delegation passed, Wells-Barnett emerged from the crowd and entered the line between two white Chicago women and marched and with them, as she knew to be just.

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African American Women and the Nineteenth Amendment (U.S. National Park Service)

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Despite all this important work by Black suffragists, the mainstream suffrage movement continued its racially discriminatory practices and even condoned white supremacist ideologies in order to garner southern support for white women's voting rights. Consequently, African American women and men became increasingly marginalized and discriminated against at woman suffrage meetings, campaigns, and marches.

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This article is an opinion piece: How the Suffrage Movement Betrayed Black Women

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Susan B. Anthony during a portrait session circa 1891. Credit... Library of Congress

Susan B. Anthony during a portrait session circa 1891. Credit... Library of Congress

The suffragist heroes Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony seized control of the feminist narrative of the 19th century. Their influential history of the movement still governs popular understanding of the struggle for women's rights and will no doubt serve as a touchstone for commemorations that will unfold across the United States around the centennial of the 19th Amendment in 2020.

That narrative, in the six-volume "History of Women's Suffrage," betrays more than a hint of vanity when it credits the Stanton-Anthony cohort with starting a movement that actually had diverse origins and many mothers. Its worst offenses may be that it rendered nearly invisible the black women who labored in the suffragist vineyard and that it looked away from the racism that tightened its grip on the fight for the women's vote in the years after the Civil War.

Historians who are not inclined to hero worship - including Elsa Barkley Brown, Lori Ginzberg and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn - have recently provided an unsparing portrait of this once-neglected period. Stripped of her halo, Stanton, the campaign's principal philosopher, is exposed as a classic liberal racist who embraced fairness in the abstract while publicly enunciating bigoted views of African-American men, whom she characterized as "Sambos" and incipient rapists in the period just after the war. The suffrage struggle itself took on a similar flavor, acquiescing to white supremacy - and selling out the interests of African-American women - when it became politically expedient to do so. This betrayal of trust opened a rift between black and white feminists that persists to this day.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton Credit... Universal History Archive, via Getty Images

This toxic legacy looms especially large as cities, including New York, prepare monuments and educational programs to celebrate the centennial of the 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, which barred the states from denying voting rights based on gender. Black feminists in particular are eager to see if these remembrances own up to the real history of the fight for the vote - and whether black suffragists appear in them.

The famous suffrage convention convened in Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1848 featured Stanton and her partner-in-arms, Lucretia Mott, in addition to the towering figure of Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and dyed-in-the-wool supporter of women's rights who was on his way to becoming one of the most famous speakers of the century. Were it not for Douglass's oratory, the historian Lisa Tetrault tells us in "The Myth of Seneca Falls," the "controversial" resolution demanding the vote for women might actually have failed.

It became clear after the Civil War that black and white women had different views of why the right to vote was essential. White women were seeking the vote as a symbol of parity with their husbands and brothers. Black women, most of whom lived in the South, were seeking the ballot for themselves and their men, as a means of empowering black communities besieged by the reign of racial terror that erupted after Emancipation.

The tension escalated in the run-up to the 15th Amendment, a provision that ostensibly barred the states from denying Negro men the right to vote. Reasonable people could, of course, disagree on the merits of who should first be given the vote - women or black men. Stanton, instead, embarked on a Klan-like tirade against the amendment. She warned that white woman would be degraded if Negro men preceded them into the franchise. Admiring historians have dismissed this as an unfortunate interlude in an exemplary life. By contrast, the historian Lori Ginzberg argues persuasively that racism and elitism were enduring features of the great suffragist's makeup and philosophy.

Similarly, the historian Faye Dudden wrote that Stanton "dipped her pen into a tincture of white racism and sketched a reference to a nightmarish figure, the black rapist," and lashed out from the pages of the suffragist paper that she and Anthony published. Her message - that passage of the 15th Amendment would mean only degradation for women at the hands of Negro men - must have cheered the Ku Klux Klan as it terrorized the black South.

Frederick Douglass Credit... Library of Congress

Douglass was clearly wounded by what he described as the "employment of certain names, such as 'Sambo,' and the gardener, and the bootblack ... and all the rest," but gracefully declined to answer insult with insult. Instead, he summarized in dramatic fashion the differences between the interests of black and white suffragists - and the case for federal protection of black voters.

"When women, because they are women," he said, "are hunted down through the cities of New York and New Orleans; when they are dragged from their houses and hung upon lampposts; when their children are torn from their arms and their brains dashed out upon the pavement; when they are objects of insult and outrage at every turn; when they are in danger of having their homes burnt down over their heads; when their children are not allowed to enter schools; then they will have an urgency to obtain the ballot equal to our own."

Douglass cut to the central fallacy of the white suffragist push - that African-American women could magically separate their blackness from their femaleness.

The 15th Amendment was, of course, ratified. Women would wait another 50 years for the 19th. Racism intensified among suffragists as they neared their goals. African-American luminaries like the noted anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells and the civil rights leader Mary Church Terrell became more deeply and publicly engaged.

As in other instances, suffragists outside the South used the racism in the Jim Crow states as an excuse for their discriminatory treatment of their black suffragist sisters. Black women's suffrage clubs that sought formal affiliation with the national white suffrage movement were discouraged from doing so on the grounds that admitting them might anger white Southerners. It has since become clear that this was a ruse Northern whites used to obscure their own discriminatory policies.

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A suffragist parade in New York in 1913. Credit... Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

The most blatant example of accommodationism came in 1913 when organizers of a huge suffragist parade in Washington demanded that black participants march in an all-black assembly at the back of the parade instead of with their state delegations. Wells famously refused. Terrell, who marched in a colored delegation as requested, believed at the time that white suffragists would exclude black women from the 19th Amendment - nicknamed the Anthony Amendment - if they thought they could get away with it. These episodes fueled within the African-American community a lasting suspicion of white suffragists and of the very idea of political cooperation across racial lines.

Historians are rightly warning groups involved in suffrage commemorations not to overstate the significance of the 19th Amendment. It covered the needs of middle-class white women quite nicely. But it meant very little to black women in the South, where most lived at the time and where election officials were well practiced in the art of obstructing black access to the ballot box. As African-American women streamed in to register, Southern officials merely stepped up the level of fraud and intimidation.

By this time, the former suffragists of the North were celebrating the amendment and were uninterested in fighting discrimination against women who were suffering racial, as opposed to gender, discrimination. As the historian Rosalyn Terborg-Penn writes: "Within a few years, white supremacy was victorious throughout the South. Unlike Black men, who had been disenfranchised within 20 years after the ratification of the 15th Amendment, Black women had lost the vote in less than a decade." It would take another half-century - and a new suffrage campaign, with black women in a leading role - before that black community was fully enfranchised, through the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The recent uproar over the monuments to white supremacy that dominate public spaces in the South has put civic groups on notice that memorials often convey pernicious messages and perpetuate historical wrongs. Organizers need to keep that in mind as they commemorate a movement in which racism clearly played a central role.
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Opinion | How the Suffrage Movement Betrayed Black Women (Published 2018)

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Susan B. Anthony during a portrait session circa 1891. Credit... Library of Congress The suffragist heroes Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony seized control of the feminist narrative of the 19th century.

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Page not found | National Women’s History Museum

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Women's History Month | All About the Holidays | PBS LearningMedia

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In the United States, March is Women's History Month. Many people use the month to honor the accomplishments of American women and educate communities about the history of women in the United States and the women's rights movement.

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Women's History Month: A Collection of Teaching Resources | Scholastic

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Celebrate Women's History Month with lesson plans and online activities to honor women who made a difference in the world.

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Lessons, Activities, Background Reading, and More

Lessons & Activities

Lesson Plans

Women's History Month Word Cloudswomen's History Month Word Clouds (PDF , 205 KB, 2 pgs.) Students ( K-12) create "word clouds" using excerpts of letters and speeches by famous women.

Women and Congress Students ( K-12) explore the benefits of increasing women's congressional representation.

March is National Women's History Month Students ( grades 3-12) explore the accomplishments of women in U.S. history with your class by creating a scrapbook that highlights the accomplishments of famous American women.

In the Shadows, Agents of Change (PDF , 131 KB, 3 pgs.) Students ( grades 6-8, adaptable for 4-5) explore the role played by gender during an era of expanding political rights and personal liberties.

Women's History Month Lessons and activities.

Sets of Additional Lessons

Women's History Lesson Plan for Teachers
Biographies and lessons examining the contributions of women in settling the West, wartime, politics, government, arts, literature, music, sports, sciences, mathematics, and technology.

Women's History Month - Science NetLinks
K-12 lessons, tools, collections, and other resources that honor the achievements and scientific work of women.

Activities

Women's History Month
Crosswords, quizzes, and other fun for kids.

Tools:

Oral History Tools
Features a set of questions for eliciting women's stories for use in your family, classroom, or community program.
American Women's History: A Research Guide: Oral History
Background Resources

Women's History Month Lessons and activities.

Text to Text | Groundbreaking Women, Then and Now Stories of groundbreaking women from all walks of life. Text, activities, and video. (K-12)
American Women Jewish Women's Archives Discovering American Women's History Online
Women's History Month Library of Congress
Resources from The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Women's History Teaching Resources
Women scientists, inventors, aviators, African American women artists, Native American women, and more.

Pages from Her Story - For Teachers (Library of Congress)
Excerpts from women's diaries, journals, memoirs, reminiscences, letters, speeches, and interviews spanning 1675-1957.

For Teachers - Women's History Month
Primary sources, lesson plans, student activities, collection guides, and research aids.

Notable Speeches and Addresses by U.S. Women, 1849-present
Full text speeches and links to brief biographies.

Women in World History
Primary sources and classroom modules.

Biographies of Women Mathematicians
Biographies of women in mathematics and other resources

Women in Science
Full and partial text access to written works of several female scientists accompanied by biographies.

Changing the Face of Medicine
Examine women's contributions to medicine.

National Women's History Month
Women's contributions to national defense.
6 Women Scientists Who Were Snubbed Due to Sexism
Museum Websites

Quizzes & Printables

Printables

Quizzes

Video
last updated: January 24, 2020

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Lesson Plans Women's History Month Word Cloudswomen's History Month Word Clouds (PDF , 205 KB, 2 pgs.) Students ( K-12) create "word clouds" using excerpts of letters and speeches by famous women. Women and Congress Students ( K-12) explore the benefits of increasing women's congressional representation.

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March is Women’s History Month – commemorating and encouraging the study, observance and celebration of the vital role of women in American history.

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Local Celebrations
As recently as the 1970s, women's history was virtually an unknown topic in the K-12 curriculum or in general public consciousness. To address this situation, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women initiated a "Women's History Week" celebration for 1978.

The week March 8th, International Women's Day, was chosen as the focal point of the observance. The local Women's History Week activities met with enthusiastic response, and dozens of schools planned special programs for Women's History Week. Over one-hundred community women participated by doing special presentations in classrooms throughout the country and an annual "Real Woman" Essay Contest drew hundreds of entries. The finale for the week was a celebratory parade and program held in the center of downtown Santa Rosa, California.

Mobilizing a Movement
In 1979, Molly Murphy MacGregor, a member of our group, was invited to participate in The Women's History Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, which was chaired by noted historian, Gerda Lerner and attended by the national leaders of organizations for women and girls. When the participants learned about the success of the Sonoma County's Women's History Week celebration, they decided to initiate similar celebrations within their own organizations, communities, and school districts. They also agreed to support an effort to secure a "National Women's History Week."

Presidential and Congressional Support
The first steps toward success came in February 1980 when President Carter issued the first Presidential Proclamation declaring the Week of March 8th 1980 as National Women's History Week. In the same year, Representative Barbara Mikulski, who at the time was in the House of Representatives, and Senator Orrin Hatch co-sponsored a Congressional Resolution for National Women's History Week 1981. This co-sponsorship demonstrated the wide-ranging political support for recognizing, honoring, and celebrating the achievements of American women.

A National Lobbying Effort
As word spread rapidly across the nation, state departments of education encouraged celebrations of National Women's History Week as an effective means to achieving equity goals within classrooms. Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Oregon, Alaska, and other states developed and distributed curriculum materials for all of their public schools. Organizations sponsored essay contests and other special programs in their local areas. Within a few years, thousands of schools and communities were celebrating National Women's History Week, supported and encouraged by resolutions from governors, city councils, school boards, and the U.S. Congress.

Each year, the dates of National Women's History Week, (the week of March 8th) changed and every year a new lobbying effort was needed. Yearly, a national effort that included thousands of individuals and hundreds of educational and women's organizations was spearheaded by the National Women's History Alliance.

National Women's History Month
By 1986, 14 states had already declared March as Women's History Month. This momentum and state-by-state action was used as the rational to lobby Congress to declare the entire month of March 1987 as National Women's History Month. In 1987, Congress declared March as National Women's History Month in perpetuity. A special Presidential Proclamation is issued every year which honors the extraordinary achievements of American women.

Presidential Message 1980
President Jimmy Carter's Message to the nation designating March 2-8, 1980 as National Women's History Week.

" From the first settlers who came to our shores, from the first American Indian families who befriended them, men and women have worked together to build this nation. Too often the women were unsung and sometimes their contributions went unnoticed. But the achievements, leadership, courage, strength and love of the women who built America was as vital as that of the men whose names we know so well.
As Dr. Gerda Lerner has noted, "Women's History is Women's Right." - It is an essential and indispensable heritage from which we can draw pride, comfort, courage, and long-range vision." I ask my fellow Americans to recognize this heritage with appropriate activities during National Women's History Week, March 2-8, 1980. I urge libraries, schools, and community organizations to focus their observances on the leaders who struggled for equality - - Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Lucy
Stone, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Tubman, and Alice Paul.
Understanding the true history of our country will help us to comprehend the need for full equality under the law for all our people.
This goal can be achieved by ratifying the 27th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states that "Equality of Rights under the Law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."

By Molly Murphy MacGregor, Executive Director and Co-founder of the National Women's History Alliance

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Why March is National Women's History Month - National Women's History Alliance

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Local Celebrations As recently as the 1970s, women's history was virtually an unknown topic in the K-12 curriculum or in general public consciousness. To address this situation, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women initiated a "Women's History Week" celebration for 1978.

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International Women's Day 2024 campaign theme: Inspire Inclusion

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FREE International Women's Day 2024 campaign theme resources to Inspire Inclusion - #IWD2024 #InspireInclusion