Women's History

Discover the lasting legacy of Southern Women during the Revolutionary War whether they were on the sidelines or on the battlefield.

Each of the Southern Revolutionary battlefields holds the history of soldiers and legends of women. From the wooded slopes of Kings Mountain to the fields of Cowpens, to the lesser-known sites like Fishing Creek and Hanging Rock, author Robert M. Dunkerly uncovers the stories and legends surrounding the women who were caught up in the struggle. This book serves not only as a study of the battles, but also as a chronicle of the experiences of women in the eighteenth century. Some were camp followers attached to the armies, while others were civilians caught in the line of fire. Women were present on nearly every battlefield, and their stories are told here for the first time.

Martha Cole Whaley recounts her 100 years of witnessing the evolution of Gatlinburg, TN.

Today, Gatlinburg is an idyllic mountain resort. But the Sugarlands Valley in the 1910s couldn't have been more different. Martha Cole Whaley began her life on the outskirts of the city and has witnessed firsthand the joy and struggle of more than one hundred years in the area. Her rich experiences include what it was like to eat onion tops for an after-school snack, bathe in a washtub behind the stove and see a zipper for the first time on the boots of the mailman. Join author Marie Maddox as she captures an amazing century of Martha's life in Gatlinburg through stories, interviews and even a few of her favorite recipes from now and then.

Oakland County boasts an impressive history of women who have excelled in business, education, the arts, philanthropy and more.

Martha Baldwin, an educator and community leader, left an indelible mark on Birmingham through her lifelong service and leadership. Mary Barra, who grew up in Waterford Township, became the first female CEO and chair of General Motors. Madonna was raised in Rochester Hills. Annemarie Roeper and her family fled from Germany to the United States in 1939 to establish the highly respected Roeper School, which uses an educational model dedicated to social justice and gifted education.

Local author Christine Blackwell tells the stories of these amazing women and others who broke barriers, improved their communities and increased opportunities for future generations.

The majesty of New York's Finger Lakes region has produced some equally majestic women who have left their mark on American history.  

From women medical pioneers like Clara Barton and Elizabeth Blackwell to aviator Blanche Stuart Scott and writer Sarah Hopkins Bradford, the iconic dames of New York's most beautiful region are not to be overlooked. Author Julie Cummins reveals remarkable women of the Finger Lakes.

Decades of Powerful Contributions

Women in Nebraska have been homesteaders, temperance and suffrage crusaders, civil rights activists, philanthropists, journalists, educators, artists, writers and entrepreneurs. Dr. Susan LaFlesche Picotte was the first Native American woman doctor in the United States. Mildred Brown operated the longest-running African American newspaper in the state. Russian immigrant Rose Blumkin built the largest furniture store in America. Journalist and reformer Harriet MacMurphy leveraged the power of Women’s Clubs to bring about food safety laws and became the first state food inspector in Nebraska. Andrea M. Riley shares the stories of these indomitable, pioneering women in Nebraska’s history so that they may be remembered and celebrated.

A vivid narrative of the heroic struggle of Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party as they worked to earn the vote, framed by the demonstration known as The Great Suffrage Parade.

The Great Suffrage Parade was the first civil rights march to use the nation's capital as a backdrop. Despite sixty years of relentless campaigning by suffrage organizations, by 1913 only six states allowed women to vote. Then Alice Paul came to Washington, D.C. She planned a grand spectacle on Pennsylvania Avenue on the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration - marking the beginning of a more aggressive strategy on the part of the women's suffrage movement. Groups of women protested and picketed outside the White House, and some were thrown into jail. Newspapers across the nation covered their activities. These tactics finally led to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Author Rebecca Boggs Roberts narrates the heroic struggle of Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party as they worked to earn the vote.

In September 1918 Elizabeth Kalb boarded a train to Washington, DC to fight for voting rights for women.

For over two years, Elizabeth lived and worked at the National Woman’s Party headquarters a block from the White House. Letters she wrote during that time describe detention at the Capitol and an arrest at the White House, raising money, serving in the organization's Tea Room and struggling through the 1918 flu epidemic. Elizabeth draws the reader into a world of intense partisanship, battles with police, and diverse personalities united in a common cause. Suffragists ensured that politicians could not ignore women’s rights.

Author Shirley Marshall uses this eyewitness account to create an indelible portrait of life within the National Woman's Party.

Massachusetts was at the center of the national struggle for women's rights, and the early activities there, described in this well-researched book, enabled the next generation of women to triumph over tradition.

Massachusetts was at the center of the national struggle for women's rights. Long before the Civil War, Lucy Stone and other Massachusetts abolitionists opposed women's exclusion from political life. They launched the organized movement at the first National Woman's Rights Convention, held in Worcester. After the war, state activists founded the Boston-based American Woman Suffrage Association and Woman's Journal to lead campaigns across the country. Their activities laid the foundation for the next generation of suffragists to triumph over tradition. Author Barbara Berenson gives these revolutionary reformers the attention they deserve in this compelling and engaging story.

In the earliest days of America's founding, Vermont stands out: a consitution that banned slavery outright and allowed those without land the right to vote, created a fertile ground for those cast aside in neighboring states--women, native american and african american people--to thrive and to to lead.

Vermont's constitution, drafted in 1777, was one of the most enlightened documents of its time, but in contrast, the history of Vermont has largely been told through the stories of influential white men. This book takes a fresh look at Vermont's history, uncovering hidden stories, from the earliest inhabitants to present-day citizens striving to overcome adversity and be advocates for change. Native Americans struggled to maintain an identity in the state while their land and rights were disappearing. Lucy Terry Prince was the first female African American poet who rose above racism to argue her case before Vermont's governor and won. Educator and historian Cynthia Bittinger unearths these and other inspirational stories of the contributions of women, Native Americans and African Americans to Vermont's history.

A vivid portrait of power, privilege, and peril in colonial Charleston.

Eighteenth-century Charleston was a city built on water, wealth, and whispers—where the harbor brimmed with merchant ships and war vessels and status was measured in wharves, wine cellars, imported porcelain, and family names that could open every door. This is colonial Charleston at its peak: a thriving Atlantic port fueled by rice and indigo, shaped by transatlantic trade, and held together by tightly woven kinship networks that blurred the line between commerce and political power.

At the center is Rebecca Brewton Motte—born into privilege, married into influence, and forced by fire, disease, and revolution to become far more than a genteel figure in a drawing room. Through the interconnected worlds of the Brewtons, Mottes, Pinckneys, and their allies, the story reveals how South Carolina’s elite built fortunes, constructed iconic townhouses, navigated epidemics and natural disasters, and managed sprawling plantations with enslaved labor powering every “luxury” detail.

But this is not a postcard version of the past. Alongside elegant architecture and consumer culture sits the raw reality of colonial life: malaria, yellow fever, smallpox, hurricanes, legal constraints on women, and the destabilizing pressure of war and British occupation. Moving from Charleston’s grand streets to backcountry plantations, this biography-driven history shows how one woman’s life illuminates the larger machinery of colonial South Carolina, the American Revolution, and the fragile world that made—and nearly unmade—an Atlantic empire. Historian and author Alexia Helsley details this remarkable history. 

Smashing the Glass Ceiling

Women in Alabama have made an outsized contribution to both the state and the nation. Before Rosa Parks, fifteen-year old Claudette Colvin challenged segregation laws on a bus in Montgomery. Georgia Gilmore used her cooking skills to empower and support protestors during the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. Singer “Big Mama” Thornton became the bridge between rock ‘n roll and the blues. After being crowned Miss America in 1951, the “Basque Spitfire” Yolande Betbeze took a defiant stand for women, forcing changes in the pageant industry. Author Joe Cuhaj profiles the unique journeys, challenges and triumphs of these and many more women who have helped shape the cultural and social landscape of not only Alabama but the world as well.

The Outer Banks of North Carolina attract those with a conviction to dream and do. Explorers, pirates, lifesavers and the world's first pilots decorate the halls of local history.

Some of the Outer Banks' greatest accomplishments are due to daring women who pushed the odds. Eleanor Dare created a new life amidst a doomed colonial expedition, Chrissy Bowser found her freedom as the Civil War rocked Roanoke Island, and Irene Tate watched the Wright brothers assemble their glider in her front yard then went on to become a record-setting pilot herself. The women in this book fought for their homes. They stepped outside the traditional roles of their day and age, seeking to preserve its history and heritage. They saved sand dunes and moved lighthouses.

Local author Hannah West tells the stories of these remarkable women.

America has an array of women writers who have made history--and many of them lived, died and were buried in Virginia.(/b>

Gothic novelists, writers of Westerns and African American poets, these writers include a Pulitzer Prize winner, the first woman writer to be named Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the first woman to top the best-seller lists in the twentieth century. Mary Roberts Rinehart was a bestselling mystery author often called "the American Agatha Christie." Anne Spencer was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance. V. C. Andrews was so popular that when she died a court ruled that her name was taxable, and the poetry of Susan Archer Talley Weiss received praise from Edgar Allan Poe.

Professor and cemetery history enthusiast Sharon Pajka has written a guide to their accomplishments in life and to their final resting places.

Nannie Berger Hairston was a crusader for justice in twentieth-century Virginia.

Nannie Berger Hairston was born in West Virginia in 1921, half a century after the end of the Civil War. She attended segregated schools, graduated, married and started a family. When Nannie’s husband, John, lost his job in the coal mine, the Hairstons moved to Southwest Virginia. It was the height of Jim Crow, and yet, against great odds, she and John became leaders in the community, advocating for civil rights and social justice. Nannie Hairston’s advice was sought by the powerless as well as the powerful. At the time of her death in 2017, she had taken her place as an icon for truth, justice and love.

Local author Sheree Scarborough uses Nannie Hairston’s own words to tell her story.

Breaking glass ceilings, organizing clubs, and making history as the first in their fields, these trailblazing Black women paved the way for new generations.

From Nettie Craig Asberry, founder of the Tacoma NAACP, to Dr. Dolores Silas, now honored by a school bearing her name, these women forged a path amid adversity. Black women were crucial to the war effort, working as Rosies at Boeing during World War II, and in the post-war years, Seattle musicians like Edyth Turnham and Her Knights of Syncopation were in high demand. These teachers, scientists, and politicians served on boards, led protests, and fought for civil rights across the state.

Join author and historian Marilyn Morgan as she chronicles the incredible lives and contributions of Washington's Black women.

Representing lawmakers and lawbreakers, artists and adventurers or scholars and activists, the women of Utah defied stereotypes.

At the crossroads of the West, they found new challenges and opportunities to forge their own paths. Emma Dean explored the Rocky Mountains with her famous spouse, John Wesley Powell. Martha Hughes Cannon defeated her husband to become the first female state senator. Maud Fitch drove an ambulance under German artillery fire to rescue downed pilots in World War I.

Author Emily Brooksby Wheeler celebrates the remarkable Utah women who, whether racing into danger or nurturing those who fell behind, changed their world and ours.

Without the efforts of inspiring, brave women of the past, the progressive and individualistic Oregon we know today might not exist. From native tribes and Oregon Trail pioneers to Victorian suffragists and unlikely politicians, strong female leaders give profound meaning to the state motto, alis volat propriis—she flies with her own wings. Writer and activist Julia Ruuttila fought for the rights of the citizens of Vanport, the largely African American town lost to a disastrous flood in 1948. Others broke stereotypes to serve their communities, like women who helped build ships during World War II and the nation's first female police officer, Portland's own Lola Baldwin. Similarly, Laura Stockton Starcher unseated her husband as mayor of Umatilla. Author Jennifer Chambers tells these and many more stories of progressive, radical women who fought for change within their state.

In 1984, Vanessa Williams broke the race barrier to become Miss America, but she was not the first Black woman to wear a pageant crown.

Black beauty pageants created a distinctive and celebrated cultural tradition during some of the most dismal times in the country's racial history. With the rise of the civil rights and Black Pride movements, pageantry also represented a component of social activism. Professor Kimberly Pellum explores this glamourous and profound history with contributions by dozens of former contestants who share their personal experiences.

Victorine Quille Adams was a Baltimore native and the first African American woman elected to the city council. Born in 1912, she lived through stringent segregation, racial violence and economic turbulence

Victorine Quille Adams was a Baltimore native and the first African American woman elected to the city council. Born in 1912, she lived through stringent segregation, racial violence and economic turbulence.

Educated at Morgan State and Coppin State Universities, she took to the classroom and enriched the lives of her students. In 1946, she founded the Colored Women's Democratic Campaign Committee to educate African American women about the vote and the power of the ballot box. In concert with fellow educators Mary McLeod Bethune, Kate Sheppard and Dr. Delores Hunt, she persisted in educating and empowering voters throughout her life. Author Ida E. Jones reveals the story of this civic leader and her crusade for equity for all people in Baltimore.