15. Women and World War I
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The significant roles women played during World War I implored Americans to take a hard look at gender equality. The contributions and sacrifices made by women during this time ignited the demand for social change, which ultimately led to the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
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World War I was named “The Great War” or more epically, “The War to End All Wars”. Trench warfare and mass casualties would soon define the era, but the actions of women here at home would define a generation, and shape women’s roles in America forever.
WWI began as a series of chain reactions to growing nationalism, industrialism, and complex alliances throughout Europe. Many nations would dive headlong into a conflict that would leave far too many dead, and the earth itself carved up by trenches and heavy artillery.
While each nation had varying reasons for joining and staying in the war, what each nation had in common were deep societal issues that bubbled at the surface before, during, and after the war. America was no different. Nationalism, nativism, racism, and sexism were alive and well in the land of the free, even as she went to Europe on a mission to “make the world safe for democracy”.
At the start of the war in Europe, America declared its neutrality, intending to stay safe on its side of the Atlantic. As media outlets reported the high casualties, many Americans supported this decision; some aggressively so, like the Woman’s Peace Party.
Earlier peace efforts and organizations had often underrepresented women or kept them from leadership roles. Yet, within a month of the start of WWI in 1914, the Woman’s Peace Parade featured 1,500 women marching down NYC’s 5th Avenue. They marched silently, wearing all black, as a reminder of the mourning women nationwide would face if their country involved their sons, husbands, or fathers in this war.
After the march, seventy-year-old veteran of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, Fanny Garrison Villard, organized the group into a permanent organization. She also linked the group with key figures of women’s organizations like Carrie Chapman Catt, president of NAWSA, to prove to American women across the board that war should be avoided. They would also send delegates to the 1915 Congress of Women in Europe who sought their own resolution to the war.
Despite the best efforts of this group and others like it, peace did not come right away, nor could American neutrality last forever. By the end of 1916, it was clear that America was edging closer to war.
Thousands of Americans joined the American Preparedness Movement in preparation for America’s eventual entry for the war, with many of America’s women supporting them. At the same time, anti-war groups met regularly with President Wilson to continue to convince him that America had her own issues to tend to (Suffrage anyone?!).
This division would continue throughout America’s participation in the war.
Despite many not agreeing with their stance of peace, the women-led peace organizations were correct in their depiction of mourning that Americans would soon face. European families had been facing losses for years and now American families were feeling that pain as the casualty lists began to grow.
Families recognized the service of their loved ones by displaying a blue banner out of their windows, and if that soldier lost their life, a gold star was added. President Wilson greatly opposed the public reminder that American men were dying in the service giving the division in the country but did approve the wearing of black armbands with a gold star by mothers and wives who had a family member who died in the military service to the United States.
It was Grace Darling Seribold in the decade after the war that united the Gold Star Mothers and convinced the federal government to finance their trips to Europe to visit their sons’ graves. The Gold Star Mothers organization still exists today to support families whose sons and daughters are lost in the military service.
It would not only be men who made families worry and mourn. Even while America was still neutral, many Americans made their way to Europe as volunteers. Men joined the armies of Europe, and hundreds of American women served in military hospitals, attempting to tackle the horror of industrial war. Within a month of America declaring war, American nurses and doctors would be the first servicemembers to arrive in Europe. Over 20,000 American women would serve in foreign hospitals, though that number would have been significantly higher if African American and immigrant women were not rejected. Likewise, the Red Cross’s number of volunteers who remained mostly stateside, rose over eight million.
WWI began as a series of chain reactions to growing nationalism, industrialism, and complex alliances throughout Europe. Many nations would dive headlong into a conflict that would leave far too many dead, and the earth itself carved up by trenches and heavy artillery.
While each nation had varying reasons for joining and staying in the war, what each nation had in common were deep societal issues that bubbled at the surface before, during, and after the war. America was no different. Nationalism, nativism, racism, and sexism were alive and well in the land of the free, even as she went to Europe on a mission to “make the world safe for democracy”.
At the start of the war in Europe, America declared its neutrality, intending to stay safe on its side of the Atlantic. As media outlets reported the high casualties, many Americans supported this decision; some aggressively so, like the Woman’s Peace Party.
Earlier peace efforts and organizations had often underrepresented women or kept them from leadership roles. Yet, within a month of the start of WWI in 1914, the Woman’s Peace Parade featured 1,500 women marching down NYC’s 5th Avenue. They marched silently, wearing all black, as a reminder of the mourning women nationwide would face if their country involved their sons, husbands, or fathers in this war.
After the march, seventy-year-old veteran of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, Fanny Garrison Villard, organized the group into a permanent organization. She also linked the group with key figures of women’s organizations like Carrie Chapman Catt, president of NAWSA, to prove to American women across the board that war should be avoided. They would also send delegates to the 1915 Congress of Women in Europe who sought their own resolution to the war.
Despite the best efforts of this group and others like it, peace did not come right away, nor could American neutrality last forever. By the end of 1916, it was clear that America was edging closer to war.
Thousands of Americans joined the American Preparedness Movement in preparation for America’s eventual entry for the war, with many of America’s women supporting them. At the same time, anti-war groups met regularly with President Wilson to continue to convince him that America had her own issues to tend to (Suffrage anyone?!).
This division would continue throughout America’s participation in the war.
Despite many not agreeing with their stance of peace, the women-led peace organizations were correct in their depiction of mourning that Americans would soon face. European families had been facing losses for years and now American families were feeling that pain as the casualty lists began to grow.
Families recognized the service of their loved ones by displaying a blue banner out of their windows, and if that soldier lost their life, a gold star was added. President Wilson greatly opposed the public reminder that American men were dying in the service giving the division in the country but did approve the wearing of black armbands with a gold star by mothers and wives who had a family member who died in the military service to the United States.
It was Grace Darling Seribold in the decade after the war that united the Gold Star Mothers and convinced the federal government to finance their trips to Europe to visit their sons’ graves. The Gold Star Mothers organization still exists today to support families whose sons and daughters are lost in the military service.
It would not only be men who made families worry and mourn. Even while America was still neutral, many Americans made their way to Europe as volunteers. Men joined the armies of Europe, and hundreds of American women served in military hospitals, attempting to tackle the horror of industrial war. Within a month of America declaring war, American nurses and doctors would be the first servicemembers to arrive in Europe. Over 20,000 American women would serve in foreign hospitals, though that number would have been significantly higher if African American and immigrant women were not rejected. Likewise, the Red Cross’s number of volunteers who remained mostly stateside, rose over eight million.
Nurses serving in the war were meant to be safe from the horrors of combat, but in an effort to save as many lives as possible, many agreed to work closer and closer to the front lines. One American woman, Beatrice MacDonald, was so close to the front lines that she took shrapnel from an artillery blast that left her with only one eye. She refused to go home, and served until the very end of the war, earning herself the Distinguished Service Cross.
Women were also recruited into the military in order to free men up for the battlefield. This would include some nurses, but women joined the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps as drivers, telephone and radio operators, clerical workers, laborers, and more. By the end of the war, 11,000 women had joined the Navy, over 7,000 women applied to the Army, and over two hundred were sent overseas as radio and telephone operators, and over 300 women would join the Marine Corps. Some left the war highly decorated, including Lenah Sutcliffe Higbee, who was chief of the Navy Nursing Corps and was the first woman awarded the Navy Cross. This award is only surpassed by the Medal of Honor in its esteem.
As with nurses, women were kept from combat, but not from risk. Six hundred women lost their lives serving in World War I.
The National Parks Service may have articulated this best when they wrote: “The Service of American women at war cost them more than just the burden of putting their lives on hold, deferring marriage and children, or pursuing higher education. The sacrifice of these women went far beyond that; in all more than six-hundred of these patriotic women lost their lives in service to their nation. The question was, how would the nation return that debt?”
This question is fitting, as America still denied women basic rights of citizenship, like the right to vote. The matter of women’s suffrage would be at the forefront despite the war, and President Wilson was not happy about it. Wilson thought it was a distraction from larger matters, and would even imprison women protesting for this right amidst the war.
The Women’s Suffrage Movement has been ongoing since America’s earliest colonial roots, but formally began in 1848. By the time World War I came around, women were not only sick of waiting, but Suffragists were also at war with themselves, as the major parties and feminists within the movement divided over opinions on goals, methods, and the extremes they were willing to take to reach their goals.
By 1890, the movement was mainly under the leadership of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton serving as their first president.
Several Western states soon started to extend the vote to women, and by 1916, Jeanette Rankin became the first American woman to hold federal office as a representative of Montana. However, the states in the East and South were holding firm against suffrage. NAWSA’s president Carrie Chapman Catt called for a national push. Women in states that already had the vote should push for a federal amendment, women in states without it should continue to work on the state level.
For some, these methods were simply too slow. NAWSA saw a splinter organization form, called the National Woman’s Party. This group, led by Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Gail Laughlin, and more, decided that asking for the vote had long proven ineffective, and it was time to demand it. Paul proclaimed that, “There will never be a new world order until women are a part of it.”
The NWP protested at the White House, held parades, published more militant literature, and even used hunger strikes to make their point known. Paul and a number of her followers would be arrested and spend time in jail for their tactics, but their message was clear: It was time for women to be recognized politically!
Paul would also address the elephant in the room, being the international crisis of war. She said, “The world crisis came about without women having anything to do with it. If the women of the world had not been excluded from world affairs, things today might have been different.”
President Wilson, who had never been a big supporter of women’s rights, was even compelled to call upon Congress for suffrage. When he asked them to pass the 19th Amendment, he said, “I regard the concurrence of the Senate in the constitutional amendment proposing the extension of the suffrage to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged. The tasks of the women lie at the very heart of the war, and I know how much stronger that heart will beat if you do this just thing and show our women that you trust them as much as you in fact and of necessity depend upon them.”
In the end, the work of women in the war effort, the sacrifices made by American women during this time, the protests and demands of women’s organizations helped them to achieve a goal more than 150 years in the making.
By the end of this era, so much remained in question. President Wilson claimed America’s participation in the war was to make the world safe for democracy, but was America itself safe for democracy when half of its population was barred from voting based on their gender alone? To what extent did environment and timing make catalysts for social change?
Women were also recruited into the military in order to free men up for the battlefield. This would include some nurses, but women joined the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps as drivers, telephone and radio operators, clerical workers, laborers, and more. By the end of the war, 11,000 women had joined the Navy, over 7,000 women applied to the Army, and over two hundred were sent overseas as radio and telephone operators, and over 300 women would join the Marine Corps. Some left the war highly decorated, including Lenah Sutcliffe Higbee, who was chief of the Navy Nursing Corps and was the first woman awarded the Navy Cross. This award is only surpassed by the Medal of Honor in its esteem.
As with nurses, women were kept from combat, but not from risk. Six hundred women lost their lives serving in World War I.
The National Parks Service may have articulated this best when they wrote: “The Service of American women at war cost them more than just the burden of putting their lives on hold, deferring marriage and children, or pursuing higher education. The sacrifice of these women went far beyond that; in all more than six-hundred of these patriotic women lost their lives in service to their nation. The question was, how would the nation return that debt?”
This question is fitting, as America still denied women basic rights of citizenship, like the right to vote. The matter of women’s suffrage would be at the forefront despite the war, and President Wilson was not happy about it. Wilson thought it was a distraction from larger matters, and would even imprison women protesting for this right amidst the war.
The Women’s Suffrage Movement has been ongoing since America’s earliest colonial roots, but formally began in 1848. By the time World War I came around, women were not only sick of waiting, but Suffragists were also at war with themselves, as the major parties and feminists within the movement divided over opinions on goals, methods, and the extremes they were willing to take to reach their goals.
By 1890, the movement was mainly under the leadership of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton serving as their first president.
Several Western states soon started to extend the vote to women, and by 1916, Jeanette Rankin became the first American woman to hold federal office as a representative of Montana. However, the states in the East and South were holding firm against suffrage. NAWSA’s president Carrie Chapman Catt called for a national push. Women in states that already had the vote should push for a federal amendment, women in states without it should continue to work on the state level.
For some, these methods were simply too slow. NAWSA saw a splinter organization form, called the National Woman’s Party. This group, led by Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, Gail Laughlin, and more, decided that asking for the vote had long proven ineffective, and it was time to demand it. Paul proclaimed that, “There will never be a new world order until women are a part of it.”
The NWP protested at the White House, held parades, published more militant literature, and even used hunger strikes to make their point known. Paul and a number of her followers would be arrested and spend time in jail for their tactics, but their message was clear: It was time for women to be recognized politically!
Paul would also address the elephant in the room, being the international crisis of war. She said, “The world crisis came about without women having anything to do with it. If the women of the world had not been excluded from world affairs, things today might have been different.”
President Wilson, who had never been a big supporter of women’s rights, was even compelled to call upon Congress for suffrage. When he asked them to pass the 19th Amendment, he said, “I regard the concurrence of the Senate in the constitutional amendment proposing the extension of the suffrage to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged. The tasks of the women lie at the very heart of the war, and I know how much stronger that heart will beat if you do this just thing and show our women that you trust them as much as you in fact and of necessity depend upon them.”
In the end, the work of women in the war effort, the sacrifices made by American women during this time, the protests and demands of women’s organizations helped them to achieve a goal more than 150 years in the making.
By the end of this era, so much remained in question. President Wilson claimed America’s participation in the war was to make the world safe for democracy, but was America itself safe for democracy when half of its population was barred from voting based on their gender alone? To what extent did environment and timing make catalysts for social change?
Draw your own conclusions
Public Domain
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Why did women join the WWI war effort?
In this inquiry, students explore women's motivations to participate in the WWI effort, looking closely at recruitment posters as well as the words of women service members themselves. 
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Public Domain
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How are women used to symbolize US ideals?
In this lesson students examine descriptions, the history, and depictions of the US or its ideals and wonder why women's bodies were used to represent these ideals. Symbols of the US include Columbia, Lady Liberty, and Lady Freedom.
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Lesson Plans from Other Organizations
- The National Women's History Museum has lesson plans on women's history.
- The Guilder Lehrman Institute for American History has lesson plans on women's history.
- The NY Historical Society has articles and classroom activities for teaching women's history.
- Unladylike 2020, in partnership with PBS, has primary sources to explore with students and outstanding videos on women from the Progressive era.
- The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has produced recommendations for teaching women's history with primary sources and provided a collection of sources for world history. Check them out!
- The Stanford History Education Group has a number of lesson plans about women in US History.
Period Specific Lesson Plans from Other Organizations
- Gilder Lehrman: This unit examines the complexity of women’s contributions to World War I. Together, these resources shed light on World War I in a compelling and very human way. The students will demonstrate what they have learned through their analysis of the various primary sources by writing a response to an essential questions posed for the unit.
- National History Day: Juliette Gordon Low (1860-1927) was nicknamed “Daisy” as an infant and the moniker stuck; her friends and family used it her whole life. Low’s childhood was marred by the outbreak of the Civil War; her mother’s family fought for the Union while her father served as a Confederate soldier. She enjoyed adventures in the Georgia countryside and her love of nature, wildlife, and sports shaped the organization she founded. A series of childhood ear infections and a botched operation left her with significant hearing loss. She married William Low in 1886 and set up homes in Georgia and England. Searching for purpose after her husband’s 1905 death, a chance 1911 meeting with Sir Robert Baden-Powell in London changed her life. Baden-Powell, the founder of Boy Scouts, recommended that Low become involved with the Girl Guides, the female equivalent of his organization. After working with female troops in England and Scotland, Low returned to Georgia to replicate the organization in America. On March 12, 1912, Low hosted the inaugural meeting of Girl Scouts of the USA. Low spent the rest of her life leading the organization, stressing leadership, community involvement, and outdoor activities. The Girl Scouts thrive today, boasting 2.6 million participants in 92 countries and an alumnae network of over 50 million women.
- National History Day: Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973) was born and raised in Montana. While studying social work at the University of Washington, she joined the woman suffrage movement. Soon after, she became a field secretary for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She traveled across the United States, advocating for suffrage. In 1916, she was elected as the first woman in the U.S. House of Representatives. Just three days after being sworn in, she cast one of two votes that would define public memory of her service - a vote against the American declaration of war on Germany in World War I. Rankin introduced a voting rights amendment that passed the House in 1918, and was the only woman in Congress to cast a vote for woman suffrage. She unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate in 1918, and spent the next two decades advocating for peace and social welfare. In 1940, she was again elected to the House, and in 1941, cast the only vote against the declaration of war on Japan. She left Congress in 1942, and remained active in anti-war movements and the philosophy of nonviolent protest for the rest of her life. She died in California in 1973.
- Unladylike: Learn how Jeannette Rankin became the first woman in United States history elected to the U.S. Congress, representing the state of Montana in the U.S. House of Representatives, in this video from Unladylike2020. As a suffragist and life-long pacifist, Rankin fought tirelessly for women’s right to vote, and voted against United States entry into WWI and WWII. Utilizing video, discussion questions, vocabulary, and teaching tips, students learn about Rankin’s role in securing women the vote nationally, and her enduring commitment to ending war.
Remedial Herstory Editors. "15. WOMEN AND WORLD WAR I." The Remedial Herstory Project. November 20, 2022. www.remedialherstory.com.
Primary AUTHOR: |
Jacqui Nelson
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Primary ReviewerS: |
Kelsie Brook Eckert
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Consulting TeamKelsie Brook Eckert, Project Director
Coordinator of Social Studies Education at Plymouth State University Dr. Barbara Tischler, Consultant Professor of History Hunter College and Columbia University Dr. Alicia Gutierrez-Romine, Consultant Assistant Professor of History at La Sierra University Jacqui Nelson, Consultant Teaching Lecturer of Military History at Plymouth State University Dr. Deanna Beachley Professor of History and Women's Studies at College of Southern Nevada |
EditorsReviewersColonial
Dr. Margaret Huettl Hannah Dutton Dr. John Krueckeberg 19th Century Dr. Rebecca Noel Michelle Stonis, MA Annabelle L. Blevins Pifer, MA Cony Marquez, PhD Candidate 20th Century Dr. Tanya Roth Dr. Jessica Frazier Mary Bezbatchenko, MA |
Survey's on U.S. Women's History
Berry and Gross tell a survey of black women in the United States.
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Susan Ware tells a short introduction to women's history in the United States.
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Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz tells a survey of indigenous people in the United States.
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Jill Lepore tells a survey of the United States.
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Gail Collins tells a survey of Women in the United States.
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Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie M. Harris place sexuality at the center of slavery studies, spanning early colonialism through the civil war.
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In From Back Alley to the Border, Alicia Gutierrez-Romine examines the history of criminal abortion in California.
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Jan Manion tells the history of women in male clothing who married other women between the Colonial Era and WWI.
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Native American Cultures
Stockel interviews Apache women and stories are told of women warrior ancestors.
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A collection of essays examining power and gender status in native cultures.
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Dive into the history of Cherokee women, and their long standing traditions.
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A collection of historical and contemporary women of Indigenous heritage who have contributed to the survival and success of their families, communities--and the United States of America.
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Colonial Era 1600-1775
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By examining the lives of six specific women in the Salem Witch Trials, Marilynne Roach shows readers what it was like to be present throughout this horrific time and how it was impossible to live through it unchanged. Roach believes that the individuals involved are too often reduced to stock characters and stereotypes when accuracy is sacrificed to indignation.
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In The Jamestown Bride, Jennifer Potter recounts the lives of the women in Jamestown, but without the resource of letters or journals she turns to the Virginia Company's merchant lists -- which were used as a kind of sales catalog for prospective husbands -- as well as censuses, court records, the minutes of Virginia's General Assemblies, letters to England from their male counterparts, and other such accounts of the everyday life of the early colonists.
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Kathleen Brown examines the origins of racism and slavery in British North America from the perspective of gender. Both a basic social relationship and a model for other social hierarchies, gender helped determine the construction of racial categories and the institution of slavery in Virginia.
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Carol Berkin's multicultural history reconstructs the lives of American women in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries-women from European, African, and Native backgrounds-and examines their varied roles as wives, mothers, household managers, laborers, rebels, and, ultimately, critical forces in shaping the new nation's culture and history.
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Revolutionary Period 1763-1783
Women of all classes and races were not only supporters and opponents of the American Revolution, they actively promoted, engaged, wrote, fought, and were deeply impacted by the outcome of the American Revolution. There are a lot of perspectives to consider, and we can only brush the surface.
Liberty's Daughters is widely considered a landmark book on the history of American women and on the Revolution itself. Norton brilliantly portrays a dramatic transformation of women's private lives in the wake of the Revolution. This fascinating human story includes lively anecdotes and revealing details from the personal papers of 450 eighteenth-century families.
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Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America’s unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease.
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They baked New England's Thanksgiving pies, preached their faith to crowds of worshippers, spied for the patriots during the Revolution, wrote that human bondage was a sin, and demanded reparations for slavery. Black women in colonial and revolutionary New England sought not only legal emancipation from slavery but defined freedom more broadly to include spiritual, familial, and economic dimensions.
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The American Revolution was a home-front war that brought scarcity, bloodshed, and danger into the life of every American. In this book, Carol Berkin shows us how women played a vital role throughout the conflict. This incisive and comprehensive history illuminates a fascinating and unknown side of the struggle for American independence.
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Mercy Otis Warren’s book is one of the earliest histories of the American Revolution, and the first to be written by a woman. It charts the progress of the entire revolution, from the imposition of the Stamp Act in 1765 through to ratification of the Constitution in 1787.This book provides brilliant insight into the history of the American Revolution from the perspective of a contemporary who was able to talk to the key figures involved. This book should be essential reading for anyone interested in the Revolutionary period and how the United States was founded.
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Early Republic 1783-1815
Following the American Revolution, US culture morphed and shifted. Women in this new republic found new roles and expectations as mothers: for to give power to the masses in a democracy, meant men needed to be educated, and their mothers needed to do it. The ideal of a Republican Mother emerged and the dynamic women of the colonial and revolutionary eras became a thing of the past.
"A New England Girlhood" is the autobiography of poet Lucy Larcom. Arriving in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 1830s after the death of her shipmaster father, eleven-year-old Lucy Larcom went to work in a textile mill to help her family make ends meet. Originally published in 1889, her engaging autobiography offers glimpses of the early years of the American factory system as well as of the social influences on her development.
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In 1762, John Adams penned a flirtatious note to “Miss Adorable,” the 17-year-old Abigail Smith. In 1801, Abigail wrote to wish her husband John a safe journey as he headed home to Quincy after serving as president of the nation he helped create. The letters that span these nearly forty years form the most significant correspondence―and reveal one of the most intriguing and inspiring partnerships―in American history.
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In Mere Equals, Lucia McMahon narrates a story about how a generation of young women who enjoyed access to new educational opportunities made sense of their individual and social identities in an American nation marked by stark political inequality between the sexes.
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Antebellum 1815-1861
The Antebellum Period is full of historical events and movements. From the rise of the abolitionist movement, the Mexican-American War, and the Trail of Tears.
In Patriots, Prostitutes, and Spies, John M. Belohlavek tells the story of women on both sides of the Mexican-American War (1846-48) as they were propelled by the bloody conflict to adopt new roles and expand traditional ones.
American women "back home" functioned as anti-war activists, pro-war supporters, and pioneering female journalists. Others moved west and established their own reputations for courage and determination in dusty border towns or bordellos. |
Bridging women's history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave‑owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South's slave market.
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This book traces the lived experiences of women lawbreakers in the state of Pennsylvania from 1820 to 1860 through the records of more than six thousand criminal court cases. By following these women from the perpetration of their crimes through the state’s efforts to punish and reform them, Erica Rhodes Hayden places them at the center of their own stories.
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The brave pioneers who made a life on the frontier were not only male—and they were not only white. The story of African-American women in the Old West is one that has largely gone untold until now. The stories of ten African-American women are reconstructed from historic documents found in century-old archives. Some of these women slaves, some were free, and some were born into slavery and found freedom in the old west.
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Civil War & Reconstruction 1861-1877
The role of women throughout the American Civil War was diverse and widespread. No matter whether one was black or white, southern or northern, women were vital in the war efforts. Some were soldiers, nurses, or took control over their farms and families stations that the men usually would.
Through richly detailed letters from the time and exhaustive research, Wickenden traces the second American revolution these women fought to bring about, the toll it took on their families, and its lasting effects on the country. Riveting and profoundly relevant to our own time, The Agitators brings a vibrant, original voice to this transformative period in our history.
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This lively and authoritative book opens a hitherto neglected chapter of Civil War history, telling the stories of hundreds of women who adopted male disguise and fought as soldiers. It explores their reasons for enlisting; their experiences in combat, and the way they were seen by their fellow soldiers and the American public.
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Historians of the Civil War often speak of "wars within a war"—the military fight, wartime struggles on the home front, and the political and moral battle to preserve the Union and end slavery. In this broadly conceived book, Thavolia Glymph provides a comprehensive new history of women's roles and lives in the Civil War—North and South, white and black, slave and free—showing how women were essentially and fully engaged in all three arenas.
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When Confederate men marched off to battle, southern women struggled with the new responsibilities of directing farms and plantations, providing for families, and supervising increasingly restive slaves. Drew Faust offers a compelling picture of the more than half-million women who belonged to the slaveholding families of the Confederacy during this period of acute crisis, when every part of these women's lives became vexed and uncertain.
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Freedom's Women examines African American women's experiences during the Civil War and early Reconstruction years in Mississippi. Exploring issues of family and work, the author shows how African American women's attempts to achieve more control over their lives shaped their attitudes toward work, marriage, family, and community.
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Emilie Davis was a free African American woman who lived in Philadelphia during the Civil War. She lived an average life in her day, but what sets her apart is that she kept a diary. Her daily entries from 1863 to 1865 touch on the momentous and the mundane: she discusses her own and her community’s reactions to events of the war, such as the Battle of Gettysburg, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the assassination of President Lincoln, as well as the minutiae of social life in Philadelphia’s black community.
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Karen Abbott illuminates one of the most fascinating yet little known aspects of the Civil War: the stories of four courageous women—a socialite, a farmgirl, an abolitionist, and a widow—who were spies. Using a wealth of primary source material and interviews with the spies’ descendants, Abbott seamlessly weaves the adventures of these four heroines throughout the tumultuous years of the war.
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Women in the Reconstruction Era, which followed the American Civil War, faced many new challenges. Freedwomen struggled to find their place in society due to separated families, mistreatment from former masters, racism, and no substantial help. Some White Northern women helped with the Freedman's Bureau and fought to help African American's where they could. Whereas, White Southern women worked towards honoring their dead and mythologizing the Confederacy.
This book examines the problems that Southern women faced during the Reconstruction Era, in Part I as mothers, wives, daughters or sisters of men burdened with financial difficulties and the radical Republican regime, and in Part II with specific illustrations of their tribulations through the letters and diaries of five different women.
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In this first critical study of female abolitionists and feminists in the freedmen's aid movement, Carol Faulkner describes these women's radical view of former slaves and the nation's responsibility to them. Moving beyond the image of the Yankee schoolmarm, Women's Radical Reconstruction demonstrates fully the complex and dynamic part played by Northern women in the design, implementation, and administration of Reconstruction policy.
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The advocates of woman suffrage and black suffrage came to a bitter falling-out in the midst of Reconstruction, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton opposed the 15th Amendment because it granted the vote to black men but not to women. How did these two causes, so long allied, come to this? Based on extensive research, Fighting Chance is a major contribution to women's history and to 19th-century political history--a story of how idealists descended to racist betrayal and desperate failure.
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The Wild West 1876-1897
On May 30, 1899, history was made when Pearl Hart, disguised as a man, held up a stagecoach in Arizona and robbed the passengers at gunpoint. A manhunt ensued as word of her heist spread, and Pearl Hart went on to become a media sensation and the most notorious female outlaw on the Western frontier.
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Hard-drinking, hard-living poker players and prostitutes of the new boom towns; wives and mothers traveling two and a half thousand miles across the prairies in covered-wagon convoys, some of them so poor they walked the entire route.
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Born a slave in eastern Tennessee, Sarah Blair Bickford (1852–1931) made her way while still a teenager to Montana Territory, where she settled in the mining boomtown of Virginia City. Race and the Wild West is the first full-length biography of this remarkable woman, whose life story affords new insight into race and belonging in the American West around the turn of the twentieth century.
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In Women of the Northern Plains, Barbara Handy-Marchello tells the stories of the unsung heroes of North Dakota's settlement era: the farm women. Enlivened by interviews with pioneer families as well as diaries, memoirs, and other primary sources, Women of the Northern Plains uncovers the significant and changing roles of Dakota farm women who were true partners to their husbands, their efforts marking the difference between success and failure for their families.
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Soiled Doves tells the story of the grey world of prostitution and the women who participated in the oldest profession. Colorful, if not socially acceptable, these ladies of easy virtue were a definite part of the early West--wearing ruffled petticoats with fancy bows, they were glamorous and plain, good and ad and many were as wild as the land they came to tame.
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Daughters of Joy will prove to be a gold mine of information, since the author's massive research makes the book a primary source as well as a thoughtful study of soiled doves on the frontier.....Butler has portrayed the stark realities of prostitution in the American West With sensitivity and insight.
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The Progressive Era 1897-1920
Following the Civil War, Americans were still divided on many many socio-political topics--including universal suffrage. Although female suffragist fought tooth and nail for the right other women fought just as hard against it. Women of all backgrounds played important roles on both sides of the journey to suffrage.
Women of color, especially African American women, were fighting for their right to vote and to be treated as full, equal citizens of the United States. Their battlefront wasn't just about gender. African American women had to deal with white abolitionist-suffragists who drew the line at sharing power with their black sisters. They had to overcome deep, exclusionary racial prejudices that were rife in the American suffrage movement. And they had to maintain their dignity--and safety--in a society that tried to keep them in its bottom ranks.
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Woodrow Wilson lands in Washington, DC, in March of 1913, a day before he is set to take the presidential oath of office. He is surprised by the modest turnout. The crowds and reporters are blocks away from Union Station, watching a parade of eight thousand suffragists on Pennsylvania Avenue in a first-of-its-kind protest organized by a twenty-five-year-old activist named Alice Paul. The next day, The New York Times calls the procession “one of the most impressively beautiful spectacles ever staged in this country.”
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Comprised of historical texts spanning two centuries, The Women's Suffrage Movement is a comprehensive and singular volume with a distinctive focus on incorporating race, class, and gender, and illuminating minority voices. At a time of enormous political and social upheaval, there could be no more important book than one that recognizes a group of exemplary women--in their own words--as they paved the way for future generations.
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Ever wonder what our foremothers were doing while our forefathers were making recorded history? And what did these women do to claim their social and political power to change their circumstances? We Demand the Right to Vote: The Journey to the 19th Amendment introduces readers to American women's first civil rights movement known as "Women's Suffrage"--women's 72-year struggle for social and political equality that culminated in their winning the right to vote via the 19th Amendment.
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Early in the twentieth century, maternal and child welfare evolved from a private family responsibility into a matter of national policy. Molly Ladd-Taylor explores both the private and public aspects of child-rearing, using the relationship between them to cast new light on the histories of motherhood, the welfare state, and women's activism in the United States.
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During the Progessive Era, a period of unprecedented ingenuity, women evangelists built the old time religion with brick and mortar, uniforms and automobiles, fresh converts and devoted protégés. Across America, entrepreneurial women founded churches, denominations, religious training schools, rescue homes, rescue missions, and evangelistic organizations.
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World War I 1914-1918
The significant roles women played during World War I implored Americans to take a hard look at gender equality. The contributions and sacrifices made by women during this time ignited the demand for social change, which ultimately led to the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
Into the Breach uses excerpts from diaries, memoirs, letters, and newspaper accounts to depict the experiences of wartime nurses, entertainers, canteen workers, interpreters, and journalists
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The Curies’ newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.
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In 1916, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the U.S. government, and he soon asked Elizebeth to apply her language skills to an exciting new venture: code-breaking. Fagone unveils America’s code-breaking history through the prism of Smith’s life, bringing into focus the unforgettable events and colorful personalities that would help shape modern intelligence.
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When World War I began, war reporting was a thoroughly masculine bastion of journalism. But that did not stop dozens of women reporters from stepping into the breach, defying gender norms and official restrictions to establish roles for themselves—and to write new kinds of narratives about women and war.
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Native American women
Based on an Athabascan Indian legend passed along for many generations from mothers to daughters of the upper Yukon River Valley in Alaska, this is the suspenseful, shocking, ultimately inspirational tale of two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine.
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In this haunting and groundbreaking historical novel, Danielle Daniel imagines the lives of women in the Algonquin territories of the 1600s, a story inspired by her family’s ancestral link to a young girl who was murdered by French settlers.
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Daunis Fontaine must learn what it means to be a strong Anishinaabe kwe (Ojibwe woman) and how far she’ll go for her community, even if it tears apart the only world she’s ever known.
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Colonial Women
Amari's life was once perfect. Engaged to the handsomest man in her tribe, adored by her family, and fortunate enough to live in a beautiful village, it never occurred to her that it could all be taken away in an instant. But that was what happened when her village was invaded by slave traders. Her family was brutally murdered as she was dragged away to a slave ship and sent to be sold in the Carolinas. There she was bought by a plantation owner and given to his son as a "birthday present".
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A riveting historical novel about Peggy Shippen Arnold, the cunning wife of Benedict Arnold and mastermind behind America’s most infamous act of treason.
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A young Puritan woman—faithful, resourceful, but afraid of the demons that dog her soul—plots her escape from a violent marriage in this riveting and propulsive novel of historical suspense.
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Revolutionary Era Women
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Rebellious Frannie Tasker knows little about the war between England and its thirteen colonies in 1776, until a shipwreck off her home in Grand Bahama Island presents an unthinkable opportunity. The body of a young woman floating in the sea gives Frannie the chance to escape her brutal stepfather--and she takes it.
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Antebellum Women
Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a relatively sheltered life. Shielded by her mother’s position as the estate’s medicine woman and cherished by the Master’s sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world.
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The House Girl, the historical fiction debut by Tara Conklin, is an unforgettable story of love, history, and a search for justice, set in modern-day New York and 1852 Virginia.
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Moments after Lisbeth is born, she’s taken from her mother and handed over to an enslaved wet nurse, Mattie, a young mother separated from her own infant son in order to care for her tiny charge. Thus begins an intense relationship that will shape both of their lives for decades to come.
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The Civil War and Reconstruction
Conjure Women is a sweeping story that brings the world of the South before and after the Civil War vividly to life. Spanning eras and generations, it tells of the lives of three unforgettable women: Miss May Belle, a wise healing woman; her precocious and observant daughter Rue, who is reluctant to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a midwife; and their master’s daughter Varina.
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Set in the midst of the Civil War, The Thread Collectors follows two very different women whose paths collide unexpectedly. In New Orleans, Stella, a young Black woman, sews maps that help enslaved men escape and join the Union Army. Lily, a Jewish woman in New York City, creates a quilt for her husband, a Union soldier stationed in Louisiana. When she goes months without hearing from him, she decides to journey to Louisiana to find him.
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Josephine N. Leary is determined to build a life of her own and a future for her family. When she moves to Edenton, North Carolina, from the plantation where she was born, she is free, newly married, and ready to follow her dreams.
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The wild West and Second Industrial Revolution
The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada’s life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows.
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When Kate Thompson’s father is killed by the notorious Rose Riders for a mysterious journal that reveals the secret location of a gold mine, the eighteen-year-old disguises herself as a boy and takes to the gritty plains looking for answers and justice.
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In this gripping historical, Chance exposes the horrors women faced in late 19th-century New York when they dared to show passion of any kind or repudiate society's norms.
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The Progressive Era
Since childhood, Anita Hemmings has longed to attend the country’s most exclusive school for women, Vassar College. Now, a bright, beautiful senior in the class of 1897, she is hiding a secret that would have banned her from admission: Anita is the only African-American student ever to attend Vassar. With her olive complexion and dark hair, this daughter of a janitor and descendant of slaves has successfully passed as white, but now finds herself rooming with Louise “Lottie” Taylor, the scion of one of New York’s most prominent families.
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It's 1913 and Laura Lyons lives with her husband, superintendent of the New York Public Library building, and their two children in an apartment located in the grand building on 5th Avenue. But Laura wants more—she applies to the Columbia Journalism School and her world is cracked open. She discovers a radical, all-female group where women loudly share their opinions on suffrage, birth control, and women's rights. Soon, Laura finds herself questioning her traditional role as wife and mother.
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In City of Lies, con woman Elizabeth Miles is desperately trying to escape men that are after her in 1917 Washington D.C. so she joins a suffragist parade in front of the White House only to get swept up, arrested and sent to the Occoquan, VA women’s prison with the other marchers.
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World War 1
Inspired by real women, this powerful novel tells the story of two unconventional American sisters who volunteer at the front during World War I.
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A group of young women from Smith College risk their lives in France at the height of World War I in this sweeping novel based on a true story—a skillful blend of Call the Midwife and The Alice Network—from New York Times bestselling author Lauren Willig.
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December 1917. As World War I rages in Europe, twenty-four-year-old Ruby Wagner, the jewel in a prominent Philadelphia family, prepares for her upcoming wedding to a society scion. Like her life so far, it’s all been carefully arranged. But when her beloved older brother is killed in combat, Ruby follows her heart and answers the Army Signal Corps’ call for women operators to help overseas.
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How to teach with Films:
Remember, teachers want the student to be the historian. What do historians do when they watch films?
- Before they watch, ask students to research the director and producers. These are the source of the information. How will their background and experience likely bias this film?
- Also, ask students to consider the context the film was created in. The film may be about history, but it was made recently. What was going on the year the film was made that could bias the film? In particular, how do you think the gains of feminism will impact the portrayal of the female characters?
- As they watch, ask students to research the historical accuracy of the film. What do online sources say about what the film gets right or wrong?
- Afterward, ask students to describe how the female characters were portrayed and what lessons they got from the film.
- Then, ask students to evaluate this film as a learning tool. Was it helpful to better understand this topic? Did the historical inaccuracies make it unhelpful? Make it clear any informed opinion is valid.
Documentaries
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Ascent of Woman: is a documentary about prehistoric and Ancient women's history across cultures.
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Witches: A Century of Murder is about the witch trials that plagued England under Kings James IV and I and Charles I.
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Taking Root is a documentary about the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Wangari Maathai. She was from Kenya and her work was on environmental protection.
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Feature Length Movies
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The Last Duel highlights the way that rape was handled in medieval Europe. It barely passes the Bechdel Test, with main actors being the male characters, but the whole theme of sex, sexuality, and gender dynamics cannot be ignored.
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Elizabeth tells the story of Elizabeth's Golden era.
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Mary Queen of Scots is a film about the relationship between the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I of England and her Catholic cousin Mary Queen of Scots who challenged her throne.
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Catherine the Great is about the career of Catherine of Russia and her challenges as a female leader.
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The Favorite is about the interesting palace life of Queen Anne and her closest female confidants. This film expands upon rumors of lesbianism within the court.
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The Woman King is a film about the Dahomey "Amazons," women warriors who fought European imperialism in West Africa.
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Albert Nobbs is a film about the life of a poor woman living in 19th century Ireland who cross dresses in order to improve her station.
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Victoria and Abdul is a film about the interesting relationship between Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim, an Indian man who earned her confidence.
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Suffragette tells the stories of English women who grappled with a way to have their voices heard in the early movement.
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The Danish Girl is historical fiction based losely on the life and marriage of a transgender pioneer.
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A Call to Spy is about the first British and American women spies that worked on the ground in France during WWII.
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Frida is a film about the first Mexican woman to have her work displayed at the Louvre in Paris, FR.
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Television Series
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The White Queen and the series that follow are based on a historical fiction novel about the rise of the Tudor family in England. The main characters are the women, who through marriage gain and lose the crown.
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The Serpent Queen tells the story of Queen Catherine de Medici of France and the complexities of being a queen regent.
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The Tudors tells the story of Henry VIII and each of his six wives. Remember the old school tale: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.
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Victoria is a TV series about the rise and career of Queen Victoria, whose reign spanned much of the 19th century.
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The Crown is a TV series that shows the rise and career of the current Queen of England, Elizabeth II. Her reign began shortly after WWII.
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Bibliography
Collins, Gail, America's Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines. New York, William Morrow, 2003.
DuBois, Ellen Carol, 1947-. Through Women's Eyes : an American History with Documents. Boston :Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005.Indians Editors. “NATIVE AMERICAN WOMEN.” Indians. N.D. http://indians.org/articles/Native-american-women.html.
Ware, Susan. American Women’s History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
DuBois, Ellen Carol, 1947-. Through Women's Eyes : an American History with Documents. Boston :Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005.Indians Editors. “NATIVE AMERICAN WOMEN.” Indians. N.D. http://indians.org/articles/Native-american-women.html.
Ware, Susan. American Women’s History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
