19. Women and World War II
|
Women in World War II, again, entered new fields. They became members of the military, who even faced combat. Took over their families, became correspondents, spies, and code breakers. The war created a time for women to branch out but still many struggled financially or were prevented, from things such as racism, to grow.
|
Martha Gellhorn, The New Yorker
Wartime is often regarded as the province of men. But contrary to popular belief, women don’t disappear during war. During World War II, American women’s individual and collective contributions to the war effort, at home and at the front, proved essential to victory.
Let’s get up to speed. After World War I, the US experienced the Roaring Twenties followed by the Great Depression. Then, the world was at war again. Nazi German troops were annexing plenty of nearby land. When they invaded Poland with the help of the Soviets, the old allies of WWI had had enough. Germany’s neighbors quickly fell to the Blitzkrieg. Blitzkrieg was not a European pastry–but a lighting war strategy that caused much of Europe to fall under occupation.
The US, sheltered by the Atlantic and the Pacific, stayed out of the war despite cries from Europe for support. European nobility Princess Märtha of Sweden even came to live in the states with her children and regularly appealed to her new friends President Franklin Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, to take up Norway's cause. Anyway, she urged them to provide Norway with war materials, and return her family to their home. But Roosevelt was in a political pickle, and kept the US out of the war.
Meanwhile, women war correspondents reported the situation to the American public. Martha Gellhorn, Josephine Herbst, and Frances Davis were among the women who told the story of the war to an international audience. They faced the discrimination common to women reporters--they were often ignored by the men. Davis observed that, “Somewhere within me there is the cloud of discomfort at being where I am not wanted.” She eventually won over her male colleagues…by smuggling their stories to France in her underwear.
Let’s get up to speed. After World War I, the US experienced the Roaring Twenties followed by the Great Depression. Then, the world was at war again. Nazi German troops were annexing plenty of nearby land. When they invaded Poland with the help of the Soviets, the old allies of WWI had had enough. Germany’s neighbors quickly fell to the Blitzkrieg. Blitzkrieg was not a European pastry–but a lighting war strategy that caused much of Europe to fall under occupation.
The US, sheltered by the Atlantic and the Pacific, stayed out of the war despite cries from Europe for support. European nobility Princess Märtha of Sweden even came to live in the states with her children and regularly appealed to her new friends President Franklin Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, to take up Norway's cause. Anyway, she urged them to provide Norway with war materials, and return her family to their home. But Roosevelt was in a political pickle, and kept the US out of the war.
Meanwhile, women war correspondents reported the situation to the American public. Martha Gellhorn, Josephine Herbst, and Frances Davis were among the women who told the story of the war to an international audience. They faced the discrimination common to women reporters--they were often ignored by the men. Davis observed that, “Somewhere within me there is the cloud of discomfort at being where I am not wanted.” She eventually won over her male colleagues…by smuggling their stories to France in her underwear.
Eleanor Roosevelt, Library of Congress
Back to Eleanor Roosevelt–pre-war was privy to immense knowledge about the situation in Europe. In May 1939, more than 900 Jews fled Germany aboard a ship bound for the US, but were turned away and forced to return to Europe, where, tragically, more than 250 were killed by the Nazis. A year later when another ship of Jewish refugees docked in New York, they sent a telegram directly to the First Lady begging for support. Eleanor answered the call, took the Secretary of State to court, and saved the lives of 81 refugees seeking asylum.
Eleanor Roosevelt’s efforts were technically against the political will of the American public, who wanted to limit immigration and stay out of war. But on December 7th, 1941, public opinion changed after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and other Pacific island sites.
Roosevelt had started a column, My Day, to help Americans through the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor Eleanor wrote, “Our people had been killed not suspecting there was an enemy, who attacked in the usual ruthless way which Hitler has prepared us to suspect. None of us can help but regret the choice which Japan has made, but having made it, she has taken on a coalition of enemies she must underestimate; unless she believes we have sadly deteriorated since our first ships sailed into her harbor.”
Eleanor Roosevelt’s efforts were technically against the political will of the American public, who wanted to limit immigration and stay out of war. But on December 7th, 1941, public opinion changed after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and other Pacific island sites.
Roosevelt had started a column, My Day, to help Americans through the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor Eleanor wrote, “Our people had been killed not suspecting there was an enemy, who attacked in the usual ruthless way which Hitler has prepared us to suspect. None of us can help but regret the choice which Japan has made, but having made it, she has taken on a coalition of enemies she must underestimate; unless she believes we have sadly deteriorated since our first ships sailed into her harbor.”
Rosie the Riveter, Library of Congress
Women had long been laboring outside the home in “gendered” jobs. As war production increased and men volunteered or were drafted into the military, factories needed women workers to shift industries and fill positions making tanks, jeeps, planes, and munitions. The symbol of “Rosie the Riveter” came to represent the woman who left the domestic sphere to support the war effort. Rosie was even the subject of a popular song in 1942.
Rosie was often portrayed as white, but in reality, a lot of Rosies were poor women of color. In fact 40 percent of Black women in America were already in the workforce, compared to only 25 percent of white women. Sidenote: Women of color made less than white women, who then made less than men. In wartime Black women finally had opportunities for new types of jobs with better pay. For most white women, the war inspired them to leave their traditional home life to learn new skills, do their patriotic duty, and earn a paycheck. Rosie the Riveter became a feminist symbol of women’s competence, independence, and disrupting traditional gender roles.
Let’s hone in on a few specific women of the time. Hortense Johnson, a Black Rosie wrote, “Of course I’m vital to victory, just as millions of men and women who are fighting to save America’s chances for Democracy, even if they never shoulder a gun… I am an inspector in a war plant… When we approve them they are ready to be… headaches for Hitler or Hirohito.”
Or let’s check out Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the first woman ever to hold a cabinet position. Perkins was instrumental in encouraging major manufacturers to hire women in defense industries. She importantly expressed the hope that the advances made by women in the workforce would continue after the war.
Rosie was often portrayed as white, but in reality, a lot of Rosies were poor women of color. In fact 40 percent of Black women in America were already in the workforce, compared to only 25 percent of white women. Sidenote: Women of color made less than white women, who then made less than men. In wartime Black women finally had opportunities for new types of jobs with better pay. For most white women, the war inspired them to leave their traditional home life to learn new skills, do their patriotic duty, and earn a paycheck. Rosie the Riveter became a feminist symbol of women’s competence, independence, and disrupting traditional gender roles.
Let’s hone in on a few specific women of the time. Hortense Johnson, a Black Rosie wrote, “Of course I’m vital to victory, just as millions of men and women who are fighting to save America’s chances for Democracy, even if they never shoulder a gun… I am an inspector in a war plant… When we approve them they are ready to be… headaches for Hitler or Hirohito.”
Or let’s check out Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the first woman ever to hold a cabinet position. Perkins was instrumental in encouraging major manufacturers to hire women in defense industries. She importantly expressed the hope that the advances made by women in the workforce would continue after the war.
Japanese American children at an internment camp in California, Library of Congress
Now for some truly terrible history. After Pearl Harbor, more than 110,000 people of Japanese descent were removed from their homes and forced to live in internment camps in remote areas of the United States. Executive Order 9066 was a response to fears on the west coast that Japanese Americans, even those who were born in the United States, maintained a primary allegiance to Japan. Very dark time for Japanese Americans and immigrants. In the camps, women got to work. They served as teachers, nurses, and organizers who did everything in their power to establish supportive communities. Their roles were domestic and maternal, but they were essential to the survival of the deportees.
Sadly, most Americans were essentially blind to the hypocrisy of fighting for democracy while fellow Americans were in camps. They went on with war life. Besides joining the job force, American women learned new skills and assumed typically “male” roles in society. They learned to drive, manage household finances, did home repairs, and in New Orleans even became street car “conductresses.” Women wrote letters to men serving overseas to provide glimpses of home. They grew victory gardens to feed their families, as basic necessities such as gasoline, coffee, sugar, butter, rubber, and canned milk were rationed. Women even gave up wearing silk stockings because that valuable fabric was used to manufacture parachutes. The slogan “Use it up-Wear it out-Make it do-or Do without” inspired creative solutions to the challenge of wartime shortages.
Sadly, most Americans were essentially blind to the hypocrisy of fighting for democracy while fellow Americans were in camps. They went on with war life. Besides joining the job force, American women learned new skills and assumed typically “male” roles in society. They learned to drive, manage household finances, did home repairs, and in New Orleans even became street car “conductresses.” Women wrote letters to men serving overseas to provide glimpses of home. They grew victory gardens to feed their families, as basic necessities such as gasoline, coffee, sugar, butter, rubber, and canned milk were rationed. Women even gave up wearing silk stockings because that valuable fabric was used to manufacture parachutes. The slogan “Use it up-Wear it out-Make it do-or Do without” inspired creative solutions to the challenge of wartime shortages.
All American Girls Professional Baseball League, Library of Congress
With the departure of many Major League Baseball players for the front lines, Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley organized the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. The League began play in 1943 with four teams. It expanded to ten teams and nearly six hundred players in its twelve-year tenure. The women played to enthusiastic crowds throughout the Midwest. Although the women were professional athletes, they were expected to maintain a “feminine” image that included dress uniforms, making it difficult to slide into a base while maintaining one’s modesty or avoiding scraped legs. Despite poor pay and long bus travel, the “girls” provided popular entertainment. They saw their job as a positive aspect of the war effort and laid the groundwork for women's sports and Title IX of the future.
But women weren’t just serving on the home and job fronts. No. Nearly three million women volunteered with the Red Cross in the US and abroad. They delivered packages of needed supplies to civilians in Europe as early as 1939, established a blood donor service that provided plasma for wounded soldiers, and even drove ambulances.
But women weren’t just serving on the home and job fronts. No. Nearly three million women volunteered with the Red Cross in the US and abroad. They delivered packages of needed supplies to civilians in Europe as early as 1939, established a blood donor service that provided plasma for wounded soldiers, and even drove ambulances.
Friedman, PBS
More than any war before, women were mobilized in the combat effort. One of the first ways they were used were as code breakers. Elizebeth Smith Friedman (1892–1980) cracked hundreds of ciphers during her career as America’s first female cryptanalyst. She was well known for her service in WWI and busting smugglers during Prohibition. Though she and her husband both worked as contractors in intelligence, she earned half her husband’s pay for the same work. After Pearl Harbor the Navy took over Friedman’s unit and demoted her.
Lucky for all of us, the sexism and setbacks did not stop Friedman. She and her team used analog methods (that means pen and paper) to break three separate Enigma machine codes. One year after Pearl Harbor, her team had cracked every one of the Nazi’s new codes. In March of 1942, she made an amazing discovery. She decoded messages that indicated the Nazis had located the Queen Mary carrying 8,000 soldiers off the coast of Brazil, and they were preparing to sink it. Friedman’s decoding success allowed the Queen Mary to evade German submarines and sail to safety.
Besides Friedman, 10,000 American women codebreakers managed the conveyor belt of wartime communications and intercepts from the Axis Powers. They were pulled from schools as teachers, found in colleges as math majors, or discovered through newspaper advertisements for crossword puzzles. It was like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for codebreaking! Their work was instrumental in winning key naval battles and gunning down the plane of Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of Pearl Harbor. They embodied patriotism and hard attitudes.
Historian Liza Mundy claims, "The recruitment of these American women—and the fact that women were behind some of the most significant individual code-breaking triumphs of the war—was one of the best-kept secrets of the conflict.”
Lucky for all of us, the sexism and setbacks did not stop Friedman. She and her team used analog methods (that means pen and paper) to break three separate Enigma machine codes. One year after Pearl Harbor, her team had cracked every one of the Nazi’s new codes. In March of 1942, she made an amazing discovery. She decoded messages that indicated the Nazis had located the Queen Mary carrying 8,000 soldiers off the coast of Brazil, and they were preparing to sink it. Friedman’s decoding success allowed the Queen Mary to evade German submarines and sail to safety.
Besides Friedman, 10,000 American women codebreakers managed the conveyor belt of wartime communications and intercepts from the Axis Powers. They were pulled from schools as teachers, found in colleges as math majors, or discovered through newspaper advertisements for crossword puzzles. It was like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for codebreaking! Their work was instrumental in winning key naval battles and gunning down the plane of Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of Pearl Harbor. They embodied patriotism and hard attitudes.
Historian Liza Mundy claims, "The recruitment of these American women—and the fact that women were behind some of the most significant individual code-breaking triumphs of the war—was one of the best-kept secrets of the conflict.”
WASPS, NPR
Women code breakers and their unbelievable value to the war effort opened the doors for women across the armed forces. First, Edith Nourse Rogers pressed Congress to create the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, nicknamed the WACs in 1942. Women rushed to enlist and be of service. More than 300,000 women volunteered.
Women led many clerical tasks, rigged parachutes, and maintained aircraft and military vehicles. The symbol of the WACs was Pallas Athena, the ancient goddess of industries of peace and arts of war. She was also the goddess of storms and battle.
Shortly after WACs got rolling, the Navy began recruiting women into their own brace–the WAVES.
Marine Corps and Coast Guard had a Women’s Reserve, and the budding civilian airforce added a branch of Women Airforce Service Pilots (or WASPS) in 1947. They flew B-26 and B-29 planes on pre-combat flights.
Women led many clerical tasks, rigged parachutes, and maintained aircraft and military vehicles. The symbol of the WACs was Pallas Athena, the ancient goddess of industries of peace and arts of war. She was also the goddess of storms and battle.
Shortly after WACs got rolling, the Navy began recruiting women into their own brace–the WAVES.
Marine Corps and Coast Guard had a Women’s Reserve, and the budding civilian airforce added a branch of Women Airforce Service Pilots (or WASPS) in 1947. They flew B-26 and B-29 planes on pre-combat flights.
Virginia Hall, ABOTA
But while the gender barrier was opening, the racial barrier persisted. Black women in these branches were often relegated to low-skill assignments or segregated entirely. Tina Hill an aircraft worker said, “I could see where they made a difference in placing you in certain jobs… all the negroes went to Department 17 because there was nothing but shooting and bucketing rivets… I just didn’t like it… [Negroes] fought hand, tooth, and nail to get in[to better work]... they were educated, but they started them off as janitors… they had to start fighting all over again to get off that broom and get something decent.” Worse, if Black women challenged their treatment, they were sometimes court martialed. The brewing hypocrisy of patriotism and racism is part of what led to the Civil Rights Movement following the war.
Some women possessed exceptional skills that were, frankly, exploited for the war effort. Virginia Hall was an American woman who lost her leg to gangrene in a hunting accident. She was fluent in French, having studied abroad and determined to be of service…but she was relegated to a desk. Defiantly, she volunteered to drive ambulances for the French army on the front line during the Nazi invasion of 1940. When France fell, she offered her services to the British in London. While the Allies were not keen on employing women, months of trying to infiltrate the Nazis with spies had failed. Ironically, Prime Minister Winston Churchill branded his emerging spy network as “ungentlemanly” warfare. Very ironic, Churchill–because it was women who were staffing the “ungentlemanly” warfare. Hall was recruited by Vera Atkins, a British intelligence officer keen on getting women into France. She knew since France fell, the countryside was mostly female, so a male spy would stick out!
Hall was dropped into France to operate a radio and pass messages back to the Allies. She helped the British land planes and supply the French resistance in preparation for D-Day. When American boys landed… there would be an armed and ready French population waiting to help. Hall emerged as a dauntless guerrilla leader. She blew up bridges and attacked German convoys.
She was rewarded by becoming the only civilian woman of the war to be decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross for “extraordinary heroism.” CIA officers continue–to this day–to use her techniques developed in France.
Some women possessed exceptional skills that were, frankly, exploited for the war effort. Virginia Hall was an American woman who lost her leg to gangrene in a hunting accident. She was fluent in French, having studied abroad and determined to be of service…but she was relegated to a desk. Defiantly, she volunteered to drive ambulances for the French army on the front line during the Nazi invasion of 1940. When France fell, she offered her services to the British in London. While the Allies were not keen on employing women, months of trying to infiltrate the Nazis with spies had failed. Ironically, Prime Minister Winston Churchill branded his emerging spy network as “ungentlemanly” warfare. Very ironic, Churchill–because it was women who were staffing the “ungentlemanly” warfare. Hall was recruited by Vera Atkins, a British intelligence officer keen on getting women into France. She knew since France fell, the countryside was mostly female, so a male spy would stick out!
Hall was dropped into France to operate a radio and pass messages back to the Allies. She helped the British land planes and supply the French resistance in preparation for D-Day. When American boys landed… there would be an armed and ready French population waiting to help. Hall emerged as a dauntless guerrilla leader. She blew up bridges and attacked German convoys.
She was rewarded by becoming the only civilian woman of the war to be decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross for “extraordinary heroism.” CIA officers continue–to this day–to use her techniques developed in France.
Martha Gelhorn, WWII
When Americans finally landed on mainland Europe on June 6, 1944, no women were allowed. However, Martha Gelhorn, a journalist, stowed away on a ship because all the male journalists were going and she was not going to be excluded. Her account of D-Day is raw and was widely read. Nevertheless, she was found out and sent back to Britain to sit in military prison for defying sexist orders. Gelhorn escaped and flew to Italy to cover the remainder of the war.
Eleanor Roosevelt addressed the nation about D-Day saying, “ The best way in which we can help is by doing our jobs here better than ever before, no matter what these jobs may be.”
It would take a year for the Allies to take Berlin. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union would get there first, with soldiers raping and pillaging German cities as they went.
Let’s talk about the iconic women scientists back in the states who helped win the war for the Allies. Leona Woods Marshall worked on Enrico Fermi’s Manhattan Project team that created a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago. Think of how complicated it was to make. Her contributions were overlooked when Fermi received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, but another woman scientist, Maria Goepert Mayer, did earn a Nobel prize for her work in nuclear physics. Both women’s work was key to the development of the atomic bomb.
Eleanor Roosevelt addressed the nation about D-Day saying, “ The best way in which we can help is by doing our jobs here better than ever before, no matter what these jobs may be.”
It would take a year for the Allies to take Berlin. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union would get there first, with soldiers raping and pillaging German cities as they went.
Let’s talk about the iconic women scientists back in the states who helped win the war for the Allies. Leona Woods Marshall worked on Enrico Fermi’s Manhattan Project team that created a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago. Think of how complicated it was to make. Her contributions were overlooked when Fermi received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, but another woman scientist, Maria Goepert Mayer, did earn a Nobel prize for her work in nuclear physics. Both women’s work was key to the development of the atomic bomb.
Atomic Heritage Foundation
Here’s one of personal favorite anecdotes–Lilli Hornig was a Harvard chemist recruited with her fellow scientist husband to work at the Los Alamos site in New Mexico. But when she arrived and met with the site’s officials, they asked how fast she could type. She clapped back, “I don’t type.” She proved the haters wrong by later working in plutonium chemistry.
Many women who worked at the Y-12 Electromagnetic Separation Plant had no idea of the critical nature of their work. The “Girls of Atomic City” operated uranium separation machines to create the U-235 isotope that fueled atomic devices. Women who came to these top secret sites as wives and children of scientists had no idea what their spouses did for work, but did the work that kept these sites functioning.
When the the first atomic weapon was successfully detonated–known as the Trinity Test–Lilli Hornig remarked, “We thought in our innocence … if we petitioned hard enough, they may do a demonstration test… But of course the military made the decision well before... [that] they were going to use it no matter what.”
While the introduction of atomic warfare is a deeply complicated part of American history, on August 6 and 9th the first atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki effectively ended the war in Japan. And the women involved–for better or worse–were part of that history.
Conclusion: In the wake of the Axis forces surrendering, the United States maintained a military presence in Japan to support rehabilitation efforts. The war was over, but the Cold War was beginning. Many women stayed on to help finish the job. As men returned from wartime service there was pressure on women to give up their high-paying war jobs and go back to their lower paid, often segregated work– and that was not cool, becoming the catalyst for the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements that shortly followed. From efforts at home, in the job force, overseas in the military, in the science lab, to even on the baseball field–American women made extensive and important contributions to the United States’ in the Second World War.
By the end of this era, so much remained in question. Would the progress made by women in this time remain into the post-war period? How would the mistreatment of people of color impact the post-war years and what role would those women play in transforming American society? Would the new options for women in the military and the workforce remain? Or would WWII be like other wars when women returned to more traditionally feminine roles? And finally, were women invisible? Absolutely not.
Many women who worked at the Y-12 Electromagnetic Separation Plant had no idea of the critical nature of their work. The “Girls of Atomic City” operated uranium separation machines to create the U-235 isotope that fueled atomic devices. Women who came to these top secret sites as wives and children of scientists had no idea what their spouses did for work, but did the work that kept these sites functioning.
When the the first atomic weapon was successfully detonated–known as the Trinity Test–Lilli Hornig remarked, “We thought in our innocence … if we petitioned hard enough, they may do a demonstration test… But of course the military made the decision well before... [that] they were going to use it no matter what.”
While the introduction of atomic warfare is a deeply complicated part of American history, on August 6 and 9th the first atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki effectively ended the war in Japan. And the women involved–for better or worse–were part of that history.
Conclusion: In the wake of the Axis forces surrendering, the United States maintained a military presence in Japan to support rehabilitation efforts. The war was over, but the Cold War was beginning. Many women stayed on to help finish the job. As men returned from wartime service there was pressure on women to give up their high-paying war jobs and go back to their lower paid, often segregated work– and that was not cool, becoming the catalyst for the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements that shortly followed. From efforts at home, in the job force, overseas in the military, in the science lab, to even on the baseball field–American women made extensive and important contributions to the United States’ in the Second World War.
By the end of this era, so much remained in question. Would the progress made by women in this time remain into the post-war period? How would the mistreatment of people of color impact the post-war years and what role would those women play in transforming American society? Would the new options for women in the military and the workforce remain? Or would WWII be like other wars when women returned to more traditionally feminine roles? And finally, were women invisible? Absolutely not.
Draw your own conclusions
Library of Congress
|
What were the human sacrifices on D-Day?
D-Day was the largest sea to land invasion in world history. It cost thousands their lives. In this inquiry, students examine primary source accounts from three women who were witness to the events of that day: Martha Gelhorn, Marie Louise Osmont, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Martha Gelhorn's full book is linked here, and Marie Louise Osmont's full diary is linked here. 
| ||||
Library of Congress
|
Did women help win WWII?
Women's role in WWII is define, but did they truly help win WWII? This inquiry uses primary sources of women who had active roles in WWII and let's students decide on if would helped win the war or not.
| ||
Library of Congress
|
Do American women deserve more credit for the Manhattan Project?
When picturing the team working on the Manhattan project women may not be the first people to come to mind. This lesson plan uses female primary sources and leads students on an inquiry to help them come to a conclusion on if the women who helped during the Manhattan project deserves more credit.
| ||
Library of Congress
|
Who were the real Rosie the Riveters?
In this inquiry, students bust the myth about women's work in WWII. Women were not new to work, middle class white women were. Rosies were often NOT white, they were women of color.
| ||
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 World History.
Period Specific Lesson Plans from Other Organizations
- Rosie the Rivetter
- Clio: Rosie the Riveter is one of the most iconic images from World War II. She represents women who took on industrial work for the duration of the war. Students will look at poster art to examine how women on the home front were represented as patriotic workers during World War II. They will learn about one of the most extraordinary propaganda campaigns in American history.
- Gilder Lehrman: Although often understated, the social, economic, and political contributions of American women have all had profound effects on the course of this nation. For evidence of this, one needs to look no further than the many roles that women have played during wartime. From the Revolutionary War's "Molly Pitcher" to the thousands of women serving the United States military today, women have not only had a direct impact on the conflicts of their times but have also successfully transformed such experiences into opportunities for future generations. Never was this more apparent than during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, more than 200,000 women served in the United States military, while over six million flooded the American workforce. Furthermore, countless women—single and married—supported the Allied war effort through activities like civic campaigning and rationing. Many American students are aware that women played a role in the Second World War. Unfortunately this knowledge is often limited only to images of "Rosie the Riveter" and the wives and mothers left to manage households on their own. This lesson is designed to introduce and promote an interest in the many essential roles that women carried out during World War II and how they did so with great success. The driving force of this lesson is a student project entitled "The Faces of War" (see both Activity Three and the Extension Activity of this lesson for further details).
- Women in the Service:
- Edcitement: In this lesson, students will explore the contributions of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) during World War II. They will examine portrayals of women in World War II posters (and newsreels) and compare and contrast them with personal recollections of the WASPs. Students will gain an understanding of the importance of the WASP program, which enhanced careers for women in aviation. Students can also explore the EDSITEment Learning Lab collection "Breaking Barriers: Race, Gender, and the U.S. Military" to learn more about the contributions of women to multiple U.S. war efforts.
- Eleanor Roosevelt:
- Gilder Lehrman: Students will be asked to read and analyze primary and secondary sources about Eleanor Roosevelt and the work she did to support social justice issues both in the United States and around the world. They will look at the role of first lady and see how Mrs. Roosevelt expanded that role to influence the political, social, and economic issues of the twentieth century. Students will increase their literacy skills as outlined in the Common Core Standards as they explore the social justice actions taken by Eleanor Roosevelt, which at times changed the course of world events.
- Edcitement: This lesson asks students to explore the various roles that Eleanor Roosevelt took on, among them: First Lady, political activist for civil rights, newspaper columnist and author, and representative to the United Nations. Students will read and analyze materials written by and about Eleanor Roosevelt to understand the changing roles of women in politics. They will look at Eleanor Roosevelt's role during and after the New Deal as well as examine the lives and works of influential women who were part of her political network. They will also examine the contributions of women in Roosevelt's network who played critical roles in shaping and administering New Deal policies.
- National Womens History Museum: The purpose of this lesson is to learn about Eleanor Roosevelt as an agent of social change as the First Lady of the United States and later as a representative to the United Nations. Moreover, students will learn how Mrs. Roosevelt used her position as the First Lady to become a champion of human rights which extended after her time in the White House. Students will read primary sources to better understand the legacy of Mrs. Roosevelt.
Remedial Herstory Editors. "19. WOMEN AND WORLD WAR II." The Remedial Herstory Project. November 20, 2022. www.remedialherstory.com.
Primary AUTHOR: |
Jacqui Nelson and
Dr. Barbara Tischler |
Primary ReviewerS: |
Kelsie Brook Eckert and Dr. Tanya Roth
|
|
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 |
EditorsAlice Stanley
ReviewersColonial
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.
|
Susan Ware tells a short introduction to women's history in the United States.
|
Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz tells a survey of indigenous people in the United States.
|
Jill Lepore tells a survey of the United States.
|
Gail Collins tells a survey of Women in the United States.
|
Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie M. Harris place sexuality at the center of slavery studies, spanning early colonialism through the civil war.
|
In From Back Alley to the Border, Alicia Gutierrez-Romine examines the history of criminal abortion in California.
|
Jan Manion tells the history of women in male clothing who married other women between the Colonial Era and WWI.
|
Native American Cultures
Stockel interviews Apache women and stories are told of women warrior ancestors.
|
A collection of essays examining power and gender status in native cultures.
|
Dive into the history of Cherokee women, and their long standing traditions.
|
|
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.
|
Colonial Era 1600-1775
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.”
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
Roaring 20's & The Great Depression 1920-1939
Macy offers a rare and fascinating glimpse into the journey of women's rights through the lens of women in sports during the pivotal decade of the 1920s. With elegant prose, poignant wit, and fascinating primary sources, Macy explores the many hurdles presented to female athletes as they stormed the field, stepped up to bat, and won the right to compete in sports.
|
By the 1920s, women were on the verge of something huge. Jazz, racy fashions, eyebrowraising new attitudes about art and sex—all of this pointed to a sleek, modern world, one that could shake off the grimness of the Great War and stride into the future in one deft, stylized gesture.
|
The passage of the 18th Amendment (banning the sale of alcohol) and the 19th (women's suffrage) in the same year is no coincidence. These two Constitutional Amendments enabled women to redefine themselves and their place in society in a way historians have neglected to explore. Liberated Spirits describes how the fight both to pass and later to repeal Prohibition was driven by women, as exemplified by two remarkable women in particular.
|
In this first study of Black radicalism in midwestern cities before the civil rights movement, Melissa Ford connects the activism of Black women who championed justice during the Great Depression to those involved in the Ferguson Uprising and the Black Lives Matter movement.
|
Daughters of the Great Depression is a reinterpretation of more than fifty well-known and rediscovered works of Depression-era fiction that illuminate one of the decade's central conflicts: whether to include women in the hard-pressed workforce or relegate them to a literal or figurative home sphere.
|
Making Choices, Making Do is a comparative study of Black and white working-class women’s survival strategies during the Great Depression. Based on analysis of employment histories and Depression-era interviews of 1,340 women in Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and South Bend and letters from domestic workers.
|
World War II 1939-1945
Wartime is often regarded as the province of men. But contrary to popular belief, women don’t disappear during war. During World War II, American women’s individual and collective contributions to the war effort, at home and at the front, proved essential to victory.
Despite the participation of African American women in all aspects of home-front activity during World War II, advertisements, recruitment posters, and newsreels portrayed largely white women as army nurses, defense plant workers, concerned mothers, and steadfast wives. This sea of white faces left for posterity images such as Rosie the Riveter, obscuring the contributions that African American women made to the war effort. In Bitter Fruit, Maureen Honey corrects this distorted picture of women's roles in World War II by collecting photos, essays, fiction, and poetry by and about black women from the four leading African American periodicals of the war period: Negro Digest, The Crisis, Opportunity, and Negro Story.
|
At the height of World War II, the US Army Airforce faced a desperate need for skilled pilots—but only men were allowed in military airplanes, even if the expert pilots who were training them to fly were women. Through grit and pure determination, 1,100 of these female pilots—who had to prove their worth time and time again—were finally allowed to ferry planes from factories to bases, to tow targets for live ammunition artillery training, to test repaired planes and new equipment, and more.
|
In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and--despite her prosthetic leg--helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it.
|
Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them.
|
Historians identify Mildred Harnack as the only American in the leadership of the German resistance, yet her remarkable story has remained almost unknown until now. Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment—a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin.
|
With the threat of the Third Reich looming, Eleanor Roosevelt employs the history of human rights to establish the idea that at the core of democracy is a spiritual responsibility to other citizens. Roosevelt then calls on all Americans, especially the youth, to prioritize the well-being of others and have faith that their fellow citizens will protect them in return. She defines this trust between people as a trait of true democracy.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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".
|
A riveting historical novel about Peggy Shippen Arnold, the cunning wife of Benedict Arnold and mastermind behind America’s most infamous act of treason.
|
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.
|
Revolutionary Era Women
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
The roaring 20's and The Great Depression
In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd, swept up by the tides of the Great Migration, flees Georgia and heads north. Full of hope, she settles in Philadelphia to build a better life. Instead she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment, and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins are lost to an illness that a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children, whom she raises with grit, mettle, and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them to meet a world that will not be kind. Their lives, captured here in twelve luminous threads, tell the story of a mother’s monumental courage—and a nation's tumultuous journey.
|
In 1935, Dottie Krasinsky is the epitome of the modern girl. A bookkeeper in Midtown Manhattan, Dottie steals kisses from her steady beau, meets her girlfriends for drinks, and eyes the latest fashions. Yet at heart, she is a dutiful daughter, living with her Yiddish-speaking parents on the Lower East Side. So when, after a single careless night, she finds herself in a family way by a charismatic but unsuitable man, she is desperate: unwed, unsure, and running out of options. After the birth of five children—and twenty years as a housewife—Dottie’s immigrant mother, Rose, is itching to return to the social activism she embraced as a young woman. With strikes and breadlines at home and National Socialism rising in Europe, there is much more important work to do than cooking and cleaning. So when she realizes that she, too, is pregnant, she struggles to reconcile her longings with her faith.
|
Harlem, 1926. Young Black women like Louise Lloyd are ending up dead. Following a harrowing kidnapping ordeal when she was in her teens, Louise is doing everything she can to maintain a normal life. She’s succeeding, too. She spends her days working at Maggie’s Café and her nights at the Zodiac, Harlem’s hottest speakeasy. Louise’s friends, especially her girlfriend, Rosa Maria Moreno, might say she’s running from her past and the notoriety that still stalks her, but don’t tell her that.
|
World War Ii
Grace Steele and Eliza Jones may be from completely different backgrounds, but when it comes to the army, specifically the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), they are both starting from the same level. Not only will they be among the first class of female officers the army has even seen, they are also the first Black women allowed to serve.
|
It's 1944, and World War II is raging across Europe and the Pacific. The war seemed far away from Margot in Iowa and Haruko in Colorado--until they were uprooted to dusty Texas, all because of the places their parents once called home: Germany and Japan.
|
New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France.
|
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
|
Ascent of Woman: is a documentary about prehistoric and Ancient women's history across cultures.
IMDB |
|
|
|
|
Witches: A Century of Murder is about the witch trials that plagued England under Kings James IV and I and Charles I.
|
|
|
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.
IMDB |
|
Feature Length Movies
|
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.
IMDB |
|
|
Elizabeth tells the story of Elizabeth's Golden era.
IMDB |
|
|
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.
IMDB |
|
Catherine the Great is about the career of Catherine of Russia and her challenges as a female leader.
IMDB |
|
|
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.
|
|
|
The Woman King is a film about the Dahomey "Amazons," women warriors who fought European imperialism in West Africa.
IMDB |
|
|
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.
IMDB |
|
|
Victoria and Abdul is a film about the interesting relationship between Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim, an Indian man who earned her confidence.
IMDB |
|
|
Suffragette tells the stories of English women who grappled with a way to have their voices heard in the early movement.
IMDB |
|
|
The Danish Girl is historical fiction based losely on the life and marriage of a transgender pioneer.
IMDB |
|
|
A Call to Spy is about the first British and American women spies that worked on the ground in France during WWII.
IMDB |
|
|
|
|
Frida is a film about the first Mexican woman to have her work displayed at the Louvre in Paris, FR.
IMDB |
|
|
|
Television Series
|
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.
IMDB |
|
|
The Serpent Queen tells the story of Queen Catherine de Medici of France and the complexities of being a queen regent.
|
|
|
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.
IMDB |
|
|
Victoria is a TV series about the rise and career of Queen Victoria, whose reign spanned much of the 19th century.
IMDB |
|
|
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.
IMDB |
|
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.
