21. Women and the Civil Rights Movement

The bold actions and sacrifices made by many women involved with the Civil Right Movement are frequently overlooked or overshadowed by the contributions of their male counterparts. The pivotal impacts made by notable women like Rosa Parks and JoAnn Robinson were credited to the achievements by figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. Female civil rights activists were subjected to unlawful detainment, assault, torcher, and murder. These heroic women, and their stories, generated momentum for the cause, often with little to no acknowledgement.

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Lesson Plans
Primary Sources
Citation
Books and Film

Recy Taylor, Public Domain

When we think about the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, names of prominent Black men often come to mind. And they’re great! But! Alongside those men--or other times off on their own initiatives--were women of color. Black women were a fearless force to be reckoned with in the Civil Rights Movement. Surprise, surprise, their work towards justice began well before the white press began paying attention. Which is why we’re gonna give their efforts a LOT of attention today!

Black people had been working for Civil Rights since the Civil War ended--through Reconstruction, after the Supreme Court upheld segregation in the Plessy v. Ferguson case, and through the Great Migration surrounding WWI. But it was the aftermath of WWII that finally pushed Civil Rights to bold national, white, awareness. Black folks found the American rhetoric about the mistreatment of European Jews deeply hypocritical. Many could clearly see parallels between the ghettos of Europe and the redlined cities of the US. Americans and the American government were obsessed with condemning prejudice overseas…and Black people were like, “Sorry, what was that? You think all prejudice is immoral? Okay, interesting.”

Black women especially had been dealing with horrifying prejudice for generations. This section is about to get pretty heavy, so trigger warning for sexual assault.

Enslaved women were often terrorized sexually while working on plantations. That trauma persisted for decades. In the South, there were literal laws that allowed enslavers to rape their enslaved women in order to produce more slaves. With a foundation of race and gender relations like that, many white men simply didn’t see women of color as equal human beings. Specifically, many white men didn’t understand Black women had rights to their own bodies--a concept called bodily integrity.

Here’s more hypocrisy--the predominant perpetrators of rape in southern communities were white men. But for some reason, a bizarre fear of Black male sexuality grew in the public dialogue. Black men were regularly and often falsely accused of sexual assault, usually resulting in convictions and often the death penalty. Meanwhile white men, accused of the same crime, might never see the inside of a jail cell. This double standard in southern courts led women of color to often stay silent in the face of sexual harassment and assault. However, as it became more clear Black men were unable to defend “their women” because of white terrorism, Black women eventually realized they would need to use their own voices.

Although not the first and certainly not the last, Recy Taylor stands out as a woman undeterred by white male aggression. On September 3rd, 1944, when she was 24-years-old, she was walking home from church in Abbeville, Alabama, with her friend and her friend’s teenage son when she was abducted and raped by six white men. Dumped from the car blindfolded, she was miraculously able to stumble home, bloodied and terrified…and turned that fear into action. She reported the account to her family and the Sheriff investigated. Taylor couldn’t identify the assailants but could describe the car–and only one man in town had a car fitting the description. The driver named names and all the men admitted to the crime… it wasn’t rape because they paid her.

During the fallout, white terrorists set Taylor’s porch on fire to intimidate her. Her family moved in with her parents and the Black community set up a guard in a nearby tree at night.

Of the encounter, Taylor said, “The peoples there — they seemed like they wasn’t concerned about what happened to me, and they didn’t try and do nothing about it. I can’t help but tell the truth of what they done to me.” Even though she worried pushing for justice was putting her family in danger, She couldn’t help but tell the truth.

The NAACP sent a young female activist from Montgomery, Alabama to investigate the case. She was also a sexual assualt survivor, and her name was Rosa Parks. The story was published in the Black press and African Americans around the country demanded that the men be prosecuted. Parks was intimidated by the police and threatened if she didn’t leave town. But surprise, surprise, she stayed. Rosa Parks--the GOAT of staying put when she wants to.

Taylor’s case resulted in a Grand Jury procedure, but none of the white men were arrested or indicted. Eugene Gordon, a Black writer for The Daily Worker, said, “The raping of Mrs. Recy Taylor was a fascist-like brutal violation of her personal rights as a woman and as a citizen of democracy.”

Soon famous leaders of Black liberation and suffrage like Mary Church Terrell worked for Taylor’s case too, but a second grand jury resulted in the same inaction. Although Taylor never got the justice she deserved, her bold fierceness was an inspiring piece of the collective movement. Eventually, sadly, Taylor’s case was replaced by yet another and the spotlight moved on

Rosa Parks, Wikimedia Commons

…But Black women couldn’t just move on. Their assault continued, and, in many ways, continues to this day.

Here’s another difficult story. On March 27, 1949, Gertrude Perkins was walking home when two white Montgomery police officers arrested her for “public drunkenness.” They threw her in the squad car, drove to a secluded spot, and raped her at gunpoint. Perkins first reported the crime to a Reverend who wisely had her account notarized. “We didn’t go to bed that morning…I kept her at my house, carefully wrote down what she said” he reported. Perkins then bravely, with supportive escorts, reported the crime to the all white police. The police chief flat out refused to investigate claiming, “my policemen would not do a thing like that.” To which I would like to respond via a time machine, “Okay well they DID.”

Again, Rosa Parks was called in. It seemed like case after case of assault on the bodies of Black women… but little was done by the white establishment. I know these are frustrating accounts to hear, with so few positive gains coming from them, but it was the reality of the time.

Finally, the women of Montgomery, Alabama had enough. They organized the Women’s Political Council under the leadership of JoAnn Robinson. They decided to target their anger at racist bus drivers--white men who threatened or harassed Black women daily, as they headed to and from work. Plus, drivers had police authority back then, so they carried weapons--obviously making it difficult to confront them and their ignorant behavior. One specific driver would expose himself to Black women as he pulled up to their stop. Like, dude, take a hint. If you’re so gross, a bunch of women form a club against you? Guess what? No one wants to see your private parts.

It was legit dangerous to file a complaint against one of these drivers. And yet! In 1953 alone, Black citizens of Montgomery filed over thirty formal complaints of abuse and mistreatment on the buses.

As early as 1954 Robinson threatened a boycott of the city buses. She wrote in a letter to the mayor, “Mayor Gayle, three-fourths of the riders of these public conveyances are Negroes. If Negroes did not patronize them, they could not possibly operate. More and more of our people are already arranging with neighbors and friends to ride to keep from being insulted and humiliated by bus drivers… Please consider this plea, and if possible, act favorably upon it, for even now plans are being made to ride less, or not at all, on our busses.”

But, of course, the situation continued. On March 2, 1955, Claudette Colvin, a teenager from Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus. She was removed from the bus by two police officers and kept in a jail cell until her mother and pastor posted her bail. She hoped word of her experience would help elevate the cause of integration, but she became pregnant. Because most people had negative attitudes toward unmarried mothers, her actions did not receive public attention.

JoAnn Robinson, Public Domain

Meanwhile, the NAACP geared up for direct action against segregation in Montgomery. However, the local male chapter leadership did not feel that the community was ready. So it was actually the actions of individual women--like Lucille Times--that pushed Montgomery’s Black community to the soon to be historical bus boycott. On June 15, 1955, Mrs. Times was driving to her local dry cleaners when the driver of a city bus tried to force her off the road. She and the driver exchanged angry words and even punches. When the police were called she was lucky not to have been arrested or beaten. When her complaints about the driver’s actions were ignored, Lucille Times mounted a one-woman boycott of city buses. Just her to start! She used her own car to offer rides to people waiting at bus stops, explaining why it was important to strike an economic blow against segregation.

Six months later, the Black community in Montgomery was up and ready for action. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, now a veteran in the struggle for bodily integrity, refused to give up her seat. She was arrested.

Overnight JoAnn Robinson threw the community into action. She wrote and distributed with the help of the Women’s Political Council 35 thousand copies of this leaflet:
“Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped. Negroes have rights, too, for its Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate.” Translation: you think we’re bluffing? Try us.

Montgomery Bus Boycott, Public Domain

The next day women and men walked to work. Historian Danielle McGuire comments on how the root of the bus boycott came from the earlier assault on Black women’s bodies. She says, “These experiences propelled African American women into every conceivable aspect of the boycott. Women were the chief strategists and negotiators of the boycott and ran its day-to-day operation. Women helped staff the elaborate carpool system, raised most of the local money for the movement, and filled the majority of the pews at the mass meetings, where they testified publicly about physical and sexual abuse on the buses.” While those initial assault losses were brutal, they set the scene and propelled the Black community toward the most well-known event of the Civil Rights era.

Scenes from the Montgomery Bus Boycott were broadcast throughout the nation. Images of people walking to work inspired activists throughout the south to continue challenging segregation. Great news! But the less great news is the women who started the movement were pushed to the side when the male leaders and reverends in the community took over the boycott. Names like the then 26-year-old Martin Luther King overshadowed the women… and in some cases took credit for the women’s efforts.

Notice how Parks is portrayed as "tired," and King is credited with everything JoAnn Robinson did? Public Domain

Of course, Montgomery was only the beginning of the movement. Quietly in the courts a little girl named Linda Brown was fighting a battle for equal education. In 1951 she was denied entrance to Topeka’s all-white elementary schools. She said, “very young child when I started walking to school. I remember the walk as being very long at that time… it was very frightening to me…I remember walking, tears freezing up on my face, because I began to cry because it was so cold.”

The NAACP was seeking a case to challenge segregated schools and hers was the ticket. They sent their best, Thurgood Marshall, to argue the case. In 1954 the Supreme Court adjudicated Brown v. Topeka Board of Education. Marshall argued against decades of standing legal precedent from Plessy v. Ferguson, stating that separate was inherently unequal– and won! YES! In your face, racists!

So! Schools across the country began desegregating. Some states in the south refused. Daisy Bates, the president of the Arkansas NAACP chapter, led the NAACP to sue the Little Rock school board after recruiting 9 students to integrate into the high school. In 1957, the Little Rock Nine were met with white violence and threats of lynching. Bates guided and prepared the students to face resistance and taunts, but the situation escalated to the point of real danger.

In the wake of the violence, President Dwight Eisenhower sent the famous 101st Airborne division to Little Rock. Soldiers occupied the school and protected the students for the entire school year.

Little Rock Nine and Daisy Bates, Wikimedia Commons

Ruby Bridges, Wikimedia Commons

In 1960, Ruby Bridges was just six years old when she became the first Black student to integrate an elementary school. Ruby and her mother were escorted by four federal marshals to the school every day that year because of the violent mobs who would appear to protest the education of a child. Bridges later said she once saw a woman holding a black baby doll in a coffin. Truly brave for Bridges, and truly humiliating for that woman.

The choice to integrate was hard on Ruby and her family. She spent her first day in the principal’s office, whites withdrew their children permanently, and only one teacher Barbara Henry, a white Boston native, was willing to teach Ruby. A class of one. Northerners sent money to support the family, but it was tough. Her dad lost his job and whites refused to do business with the family. Still, Ruby never missed a day of school.

Switching gears to more communal efforts--in February 1960, college men and women staged sit-ins at Woolworth store lunch counters. Students sat peacefully for hours as they were refused service by nervous waitresses. Diane Nash Bevel was a leader within the student movement at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. Her family was horrified, and she was nervous, not wanting to go to jail, but she said, “When the time came, I went.” Sometimes defying unjust laws is just the right thing to do.
Women, including Nash, were also active participants in the Freedom Rides. They rode interstate buses and attempted to integrate local restrooms, waiting areas, and restaurants. The Freedom Riders were brutally beaten and one of their buses was set afire. Riders were also imprisoned at Mississippi’s Parchman Prison, where they were subjected to brutal treatment. Nash knew that if they let the violence stop them the cause would be lost. She said, “We recognized that if the Freedom Ride was ended right then after all that violence, southern white racists would think that they could stop a project by inflicting enough violence on it… we wouldn’t have been able to have any kind of movement for voting rights, for buses, public accommodations or anything after that, without getting a lot of people killed first.”

Public Domain

As we saw with Ruby Bridges, age was not a deterrent for white violence. In 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed by terrorists. The only victims were five young girls who had been in the basement, two of them sisters, gathered in the ladies room in their best dresses, happily chatting. One of the girls survived but lost her eye. Their deaths took Civil Rights international--with people all over the world arguing for the end of racism in America. The girls became martyrs to the movement, and the grief galvanized the movement, which at last solidified the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But of course, though the Civil Rights Act was an important victory, it did not magically end prejudice in the US.

Viola Liuzzo, Wikimedia Commons

In the summer of 1964, students from northern colleges joined civil rights activists to organize voter registration drives in Mississippi. In spite of their efforts to register Black voters, white primaries and intimidation made it difficult for Black people to exercise political power. In response, Fannie Lou Hamer and others established the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party that challenged the regular party for seats at the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City. Unfortunately, the challengers lost their battle for representation and returned to Mississippi frustrated. In the process, many people were arrested. In one incident, white police officers forced two Black prisoners to savagely beat Hamer with loaded Blackjacks, and she almost died.

The violence and intimidation clearly continued. Women civil rights workers of all races were not immune from beatings, or murder. Viola Liuzzo, a white housewife from Detroit, joined Dr. King after witnessing the brutal “Bloody Sunday” march across the Edmund Pettus bridge on television. She attended the later completion of the march. Afterwards, as she shuttled other marchers back, she was ambushed and shot from a passing vehicle by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Reviled by racists as a white woman who abandoned her family, she was revered by others as a civil rights martyr.

Corretta Scott King, Public Domain

In 1967, the federal government intervened with Civil Rights again in the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia. Richard and Mildred Loving challenged Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act banning interracial marriage that dated back to 1924, and they were successful. The ruling was unanimous, and it overturned all marriage restrictions across the country. Plus, it’s got to be the most appropriately named Supreme Court case in history.

Many participants in the civil rights movement expressed frustration at the slow progress of the peaceful demonstrations. SNCC expelled its white members, asserting that it was time for Black rights to come from Black action. Stokley Carmichel articulated the idea of Black Power in 1966, and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in the same year in reaction to the Assassination of Malcolm X. By the time Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968 the Black panthers had roughly 2000 members around the country and were growing. However, not all Black people, including women, were convinced to depart from nonviolence.

Coretta Scott King was one such contrarian--even though peaceful protest had obviously been very hard on her family. When her husband Dr. King was attacked or hospitalized, she was the one in the hospital caring for and supporting him. Coretta was in the house when it was bombed in 1956 along with their children. She was often stuck between her father, who was concerned about her safety, and her husband who wanted her to be with him. She personally came under attack when the FBI mailed her tapes alleging her husband's affairs, intending to dismantle King's support system underneath him. Man, racists are desperate. In the aftermath of King’s assassination, she doubled down on nonviolence and became heavily involved in the civil rights movement. She founded the King Center for nonviolent social change and led as president and CEO.

But back to the Black Power movement. It did grow, despite being sometimes polarizing. Clearly, the violence against Black people topped the movement’s list of priorities. In 1968 the average age of a Panther was 19 and half were women. Female Panthers often worked 18-hour days to actualize the party vision. Women didn’t dominate headlines or get media sound bites, but they were the soul of daily operations and the community survival programs.

Although the party had community building aims, it was not portrayed that way in the press. It was also under constant surveillance and attack by the police and FBI. On June 15, 1969, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover declared that “the Black Panther Party, without question, represents the greatest threat to internal security of the country.” By 1970, many of the party’s leaders had been imprisoned or killed in gun battles with police. Beyond corrupt.

Angela Davis, who is also known as a respected scholar and professor, was very active in Black Power. In 1970, she was accused of supplying guns to a group that staged an armed takeover of a California courtroom. She was kept in prison for more than a year, and then acquitted of all charges in 1972. Would you imagine that? Davis’s struggle against the legal system was a symbol of the continuing efforts by the government to repress unpopular views, especially when such views were held by Black women.

Let’s discuss one of the most extreme cases of government corruption against Black Power. A Panther named Akua Njeri, then 19, was engaged to the charismatic Fred Hampton, the leader of the powerful Chicago chapter. On December 4, 1969, she was nine months pregnant when a group of police stormed into their apartment on Chicago’s West Side to execute a search warrant for illegal guns. They came in shooting and instantly killed one of the Panther men. Njeri woke to bullets flying past her and Hampton, but he was somehow still asleep. We now know he was drugged by an FBI informant within the Panther ranks. She recalled straddling Hampton’s body to protect him from the barrage of bullets, which only momentarily stopped when another person in the apartment yelled, “Stop shooting, stop shooting, we have a pregnant woman, pregnant sister in here!" By several accounts the officers then entered the bedroom and shot Hampton dead, point-blank. Njeri was jailed, supporters paid her bail, and she gave birth under extreme stress to her son Fred Hampton, Jr.

Despite being active in social reform and civil rights, the women Panthers certainly still experienced sexism. Party leaders favored promoting men members, sexualized women members, and had double standards. While in general the party adopted the free love movement and embraced diverse sexualities, some heterosexual male Panthers expected and demanded sexual favors from women. And some women definitely resented that.

Only one woman became leader of the organization in its history, Elaine Brown in 1974. Her statement to the organization made her dominance clear, “I have all the guns and the money. I can withstand challenge from without and from within. ” In other words, “bring it on.” Brown put women in key administrative positions, which made some men in the party upset. After a short service Brown left the party when a female administrator, Regina Davis, was beaten and hospitalized by members of the party at the approval of Huey Newton. “The beating of Regina would be taken as a clear signal that the words ‘Panther’ and ‘comrade’ had taken on gender connotations, denoting an inferiority in the female half of us.”

Conclusion: The inequities both in the Panthers and the wider civil rights movement drove many women toward intersectional feminism. The Civil Rights Movement was an empowering but incredibly difficult time for Black women. The work of activists and countless protesters of all races brought about new legislation to end segregation, voter suppression, discriminatory employment, and housing practices. Yet today, so much still remains to be done.

By the end of this era, so much remained in question. How can social equality for people of color be achieved in this country? What effect did Black women have on improving sexism within Civil Rights ranks? Did women’s participation in the civil rights movement contribute to the emergence of second wave feminism?

Draw your own conclusions

Learn how to teach with inquiry.

Library of Congress

Why were Black women’s stories overlooked in the Montgomery bus boycott?
Black women were at the heart of the Montgomery movement, but history erased all but Parks-- Parks, a decades long NAACP field agent, was turned into a fatigued seamstress. But that's not the real story. In this lesson, students will investigate what really caused the boycott. Students will know the stories and names of Recy Taylor, Gertrude Perkins, and Jo Ann Robinson-- as well as the truth behind why Parks refused to move that day.

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Library of Congress

Were women integral to the Black Panther Party? Were the Black Panthers sexist?
Women represented fifty percent of the Black Panther Party, representing the rank and file of the party, but most depictions of the party hide their presence. This inquiry examines the party and the young women who held it together, fulfilled its mission, and dealt with internal misogyny.

Also, check out this article from the Zinn History Education Group and this Role Play Activity. We highly recommend you try them in class.

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Were women integral to the Black Panther Party?.pdf
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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

Rosa Parks:
- Teaching Tolerance: Most history textbooks include a section about Rosa Parks in the chapter on the modern civil rights movement. However, Parks is only one among many African-American women who have worked for equal rights and social justice. This series introduces four of those activists who may be unfamiliar to students.
  - Lesson 1, Maya Angelou, focuses on questions of identity as students read and analyze Angelou’s inspirational poem “Still I Rise” and apply its message to their own lives. Students learn how Maya Angelou overcame hardship and discrimination to find her own voice and to influence others to believe in themselves and use their voices for positive change.
  - Lesson 2, Mary Church Terrell, focuses on questions of diversity among turn of the 20th century African Americans. Students read and analyze an 1898 speech by the founding president of the National Association of Colored Women about the class differences within African-American communities and the NACW’s philosophy of “lifting as we climb.”
  - Lesson 3, Mary McLeod Bethune, focuses on questions of justice. Students read an interview with this prominent African-American educator and learn about how her personal experience of discrimination motivated her to open a school for African-American students in Florida and to devote her life to the struggle for equality.
  - Lesson 4, Marian Wright Edelman, focuses on questions of activism. Students read a commencement speech given by this well-known founder of the Children’s Defense Fund and learn how Edelman has dedicated her life to "paying it forward" and rising above circumstances to make lives better for others. They are then encouraged to apply lessons from the speech to their own lives as they identify and implement opportunities to help improve the lives of those in their school or community.
  - Each lesson includes a central text and provides strategies for reading and understanding that text. Students are encouraged to make connections between the texts and their own experiences and to take action against the inequities they identify.
- PBS: After the Civil War and through the Civil Rights era of the 1950s, racial segregation laws made life for many African Americans extremely difficult. Rosa Parks—long-standing civil rights activist and author—is best known for her refusal to give up her seat to a white bus passenger, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Through two primary source activities and a short video, students will learn about Parks’ lifelong commitment to the Civil Rights Movement.
- Scholastic: This unique activity introduces Rosa Parks and provides an opportunity for students to respond to her experience in writing. As students learn about "the Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement," they see how individuals have shaped American history.
- National Women’s History Museum: How has the activism of Native American women contributed to fights for the liberation of Native people and communities? Is a lesson plan by the NWHM that helps students reconsider the role of women in native history, the central role they played in challenging how indigenous history was taught, and their activism in the 1960s.
- Zinn History Education Group: In this lesson plan students assume the roles of characters working in and against the Black panther party. Many of the roles are female, showing the integral role women played in the movement.
- C3 Teachers: This inquiry leads students through an investigation of the education system in the United States, focusing on the extent to which systemic racism continues to plague modern schooling. Students investigate schooling before and after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case in order to evaluate the impact and effectiveness, or “success,” of school desegregation.
- National History Day: Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) was born Fannie Lou Townsend on October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi. She later moved to Sunflower County where she began sharecropping at the age of six. She married Perry Hammer in 1944 and moved to a plantation in Ruleville, Mississippi. Due to her eighth grade education, she was asked by the plantation owner to serve as the timekeeper, which she did for 18 years. Hamer traveled, unsuccessfully, to Indianola to attempt to vote in 1962. Upon returning to the plantation, she lost her job, forcing her family to find somewhere else to live and work. In 1963, Hamer was named field secretary of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). That fall, while traveling back from a training session, she was arrested and brutally beaten in jail. Through her tireless efforts, Hamer was appointed vice-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). The following year, the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed. This pivotal legislation would not have been possible were it not for the efforts of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
- National History Day: Marian Anderson (1897-1993) discovered the power of her voice at a young age. The Philadelphia native possessed a unique contralto range that helped her become an internationally acclaimed talent. Despite being denied entry into several conservatories because of her race, Anderson’s private training with top vocal instructors led her to performances from New York’s Carnegie Hall to Paris. She entertained several European monarchs and was the first African American to sing at the White House when she accepted an invitation from Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in 1936. Throughout her career she dealt with segregation in America, and in 1939 the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. A national backlash to this decision, spearheaded by Eleanor Roosevelt’s resignation from the DAR in protest, led to Anderson singing for 75,000 people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday 1939. After this key moment for civil rights, she continued her groundbreaking career, along the way becoming the first African American to perform at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1955. In 1963, she sang at the March on Washington and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
LGBTQ+ Rights:
- National Women’s History Museum: Should LGBTQ history be required by all states? This lesson seeks to explore the Stonewall Riots, the media interpretation of them, and inclusion and exclusion in the LGBTQ movement through the life of Marsha P. Johnson, including the connections to the present day. Students will examine news articles from the time, reflections from trans activists, and explore the ways the impacts of intersectionality on the LGBTQ community. Through a set of activities, students will explore how Stonewall has been understood and some of the unsung heroes, ultimately seeking to ask why they were unsung. As a summative assessment, students will complete a writing exercise in which they seek to connect the debate over the film Stonewall to what they have learned in class and reflect on what they have learned.
- Teaching Tolerance: Most history textbooks lack inclusion of the significant contributions LGBT African-Americans made to the civil rights movement. This series introduces students to four LGBT people of African descent with whom they may not be familiar, yet who were indispensable to the ideas, strategies and activities that made the civil rights movement a successful political and social revolution.
- Stanford History Education Group: In the early hours of June 28, 1969, a police raid of the Stonewall Inn exploded into a riot when patrons of the LGBT bar resisted arrest and clashed with police. The Stonewall Riots are widely considered to be the start of the LGBT rights movement in the United States. In this lesson, students analyze four documents to answer the question: What caused the Stonewall Riots?

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Remedial Herstory Editors. "21. WOMEN AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT." The Remedial Herstory Project. November 20, 2022. www.remedialherstory.com.

Primary AUTHOR:

Kelsie Brook Eckert

Primary ReviewerS:

Dr. Barbara Tischler

Consulting Team

Kelsie 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

Editors

Alice Stanley

Reviewers

Colonial
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

Published Books
Historical Fiction
Films

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.

American Indian women have traditionally played vital roles in social hierarchies at the family, clan, and tribal levels. In the Cherokee Nation, specifically, women and men are considered equal contributors to the culture. With this study, however, we learn that three key historical events in the 19th and early 20th centuries—removal, the Civil War, and allotment of their lands—forced a radical renegotiation of gender roles and relations in Cherokee society.

Weaving her own story with the story of her ancestors and with the broader themes of creation, replacement, and disappearance, Krawec helps readers see settler colonialism through the eyes of an Indigenous writer. Settler colonialism tried to force us into one particular way of living, but the old ways of kinship can help us imagine a different future.

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

When black women were brought from Africa to the New World as slave laborers, their value was determined by their ability to work as well as their potential to bear children, who by law would become the enslaved property of the mother's master. In Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery, Jennifer L. Morgan examines for the first time how African women's labor in both senses became intertwined in the English colonies.

In 1719, a ship named La Mutine (the mutinous woman), sailed from the French port of Le Havre, bound for the Mississippi. Its principal commodity was a new kind of export: women. Falsely accused of sex crimes, these women were prisoners, shackled in the ship’s hold. Of the 132 women who were sent this way, only 62 survived. But these women carved out a place for themselves in the colonies that would have been impossible in France, making advantageous marriages and accumulating property.

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.

On a rainy night in 1777, sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington mounted her beloved horse and rode forty miles through enemy-infested Putnam County to warn her father's regiment of impending British raids. Riding twice the distance of Paul Revere and under more dire circumstances, her heroic efforts helped position the Continental army in subsequent battles. A widow at a young age, Sybil became a successful businesswoman in a male-dominated profession and lived in the region for her remaining years. Through family documents and correspondence, author Vincent T. Dacquino charts the incredible life and legacy of Sybil Ludington.

In 1772, the High Court in London freed a slave from Virginia named Somerset, setting a precedent that would end slavery in England. In America, racist fury over this momentous decision united the Northern and Southern colonies and convinced them to fight for independence. Meticulously researched and accessible, Slave Nation provides a little-known view of the birth of our nation and its earliest steps toward self-governance.

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.

Celebrated for her exploits as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman has entered history as one of nineteenth-century America's most enduring and important figures. But just who was this remarkable woman? To John Brown, leader of the Harper's Ferry slave uprising, she was General Tubman. For the many slaves she led north to freedom, she was Moses. To the slaveholders who sought her capture, she was a thief and a trickster. To abolitionists, she was a prophet.

A small group of black and white American women who banded together in the 1830s and 1840s to remedy the evils of slavery and racism, the "antislavery females" included many who ultimately struggled for equal rights for women as well. Organizing fundraising fairs, writing pamphlets and giftbooks, circulating petitions, even speaking before "promiscuous" audiences including men and women―the antislavery women energetically created a diverse and dynamic political culture.

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.

Post War America 1946-1960

Using evidence from primary sources as well as over seven years of interviews with sixteen women, Yamaguchi provides a feminist, intergenerational, and historical study of how unequal the justice system has been to this group of people and how it has affected their quality of life, sense of identity, and relationship with future generations.

In the popular stereotype of post-World War II America, women abandoned their wartime jobs and contentedly retreated to the home. These mythical women were like the 1950s TV character June Cleaver, white, middle-class, suburban housewives. Not June Cleaver unveils the diversity of postwar women, showing how far women departed form this one-dimensional image.

Homeward Bound tells the story of domestic containment - how it emerged, how it affected the lives of those who tried to conform to it, and how it unraveled in the wake of the Vietnam era's assault on Cold War culture, when unwed mothers, feminists, and "secular humanists" became the new "enemy."

The Montgomery Bus Boycott, which ignited the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, has always been vitally important in southern and black history. With the publication of this book, the boycott becomes a milestone in the history of American women as well.

Reducing Bodies: Mass Culture and the Female Figure in Postwar America explores the ways in which women in the years following World War II refashioned their bodies―through reducing diets, exercise, and plastic surgery―and asks what insights these changing beauty standards can offer into gender dynamics in postwar America.

Civil Rights Movement and Social Reform 1960-1980

Berdis Baldwin, Alberta King, and Louise Little were all born at the beginning of the 20th century and forced to contend with the prejudices of Jim Crow as Black women. These women used their strength and motherhood to push their children toward greatness, all with a conviction that every human being deserves dignity and respect despite the rampant discrimination they faced.

In this inspiring collection of true stories, thirty African-Americans who were children or teenagers in the 1950s and 1960s talk about what it was like for them to fight segregation in the South-to sit in an all-white restaurant and demand to be served, to refuse to give up a seat at the front of the bus, to be among the first to integrate the public schools, and to face violence, arrest, and even death for the cause of freedom.

In this groundbreaking and important book, Danielle McGuire writes about the rape in 1944 of a twenty-four-year-old mother and sharecropper, Recy Taylor, who strolled toward home after an evening of singing and praying at the Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Alabama. Seven white men, armed with knives and shotguns, ordered the young woman into their green Chevrolet, raped her, and left her for dead. The president of the local NAACP branch office sent his best investigator and organizer—Rosa Parks—to Abbeville. In taking on this case, Parks launched a movement that exposed a ritualized history of sexual assault against Black women and added fire to the growing call for change.

Organized around a rich blend of oral histories, Going South follows a group of Jewish women―come of age in the shadow of the Holocaust and deeply committed to social justice―who put their bodies and lives on the line to fight racism. Actively rejecting the post-war idyll of suburban, Jewish, middle-class life, these women were deeply influenced by Jewish notions of morality and social justice. Many thus perceived the call of the movement as positively irresistible.

In Lighting the Fires of Freedom Janet Dewart Bell shines a light on women's all-too-often overlooked achievements in the Movement. Through wide-ranging conversations with nine women, several now in their nineties with decades of untold stories, we hear what ignited and fueled their activism, as Bell vividly captures their inspiring voices. Lighting the Fires of Freedom offers these deeply personal and intimate accounts of extraordinary struggles for justice that resulted in profound social change, stories that are vital and relevant today.

Unbought and Unbossed is Shirley Chisholm's account of her remarkable rise from young girl in Brooklyn to America's first African-American Congresswoman. She shares how she took on an entrenched system, gave a public voice to millions, and sets the stage for her trailblazing bid to be the first woman and first African-American President of the United States.

On June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, was raided by police. But instead of responding with the typical compliance the NYPD expected, patrons and a growing crowd decided to fight back. The five days of rioting that ensued changed forever the face of gay and lesbian life.

Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.

Norman tells the dramatic story of fifty women—members of the Army, Navy, and Air Force Nurse Corps—who went to war, working in military hospitals, aboard ships, and with air evacuation squadrons during the Vietnam War. Here, in a moving narrative, the women talk about why they went to war, the experiences they had while they were there, and how war affected them physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

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

Addie stands with the restless crowd in Boston Harbor, watching her brother climb aboard the English tea ship. She isn’t supposed to be out, but this is no ordinary night. When she sees him start to toss the cargo into the water, she knows her world is about to change forever…

As the Revolutionary War begins, thirteen-year-old Isabel wages her own fight...for freedom. Promised freedom upon the death of their owner, she and her sister, Ruth, in a cruel twist of fate become the property of a malicious New York City couple, the Locktons, who have no sympathy for the American Revolution and even less for Ruth and Isabel.

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.

Post War America

In 1959 Virginia, the lives of two girls on opposite sides of the battle for civil rights will be changed forever. Sarah Dunbar is one of the first black students to attend the previously all-white Jefferson High School. Linda Hairston is the daughter of one of the town's most vocal opponents of school integration. Forced to work together on a school project, Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths about race, power and how they really feel about one another.

In the Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo we hear the wildly addictive journey of a reclusive Hollywood starlet as she reflects on her relentless rise to the top and the risks she took, the loves she lost, and the long-held secrets the public could never imagine.

America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day

Civil Rights Movement

At the end of a sweltering summer shaped by the tragic assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy, race riots, political protests, and the birth of Black power, three coeds from New York City—Zelda Livingston, Veronica Cook, and Daphne Brooks—pack into Veronica’s new Ford Fairlane convertible, bound for Atlanta and their last year at Spelman College.

It is the summer of 1964. In Tupelo, Mississippi, the town of Elvis’s birth, tensions are mounting over civil-rights demonstrations occurring ever more frequently–and violently–across the state. But in Paige Dunn’s small, ramshackle house, there are more immediate concerns. Challenged by the effects of the polio, Paige is determined to live as normal a life as possible and to raise her daughter, Diana.

Montgomery, Alabama, 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend intends to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she hopes to help women shape their destinies, to make their own choices for their lives and bodies.

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.
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Barbarians Rising: Warrior Queen Boudica shows the rise and fall of Boudica.
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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.

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

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.

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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The Guernsey etc. is based on a novel of the same name, about post war England.
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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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The Iron Lady is a biopic of Margaret Thatcher.
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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.
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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.

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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BACK

Bibliography

Brown, Deneen L. “The first and only woman to lead the Black Panther Party: ‘I have all the guns and money’.” The Lily News. Last modified January 12, 2018. https://www.thelily.com/the-first-and-only-woman-to-lead-the-black-panther-party/.

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.

Darville, Sarah. “In her own words: Remembering Linda Brown, who was at the center of America’s school segregation battles.” Chalk Beat. March 27, 2018. https://www.chalkbeat.org/2018/3/27/21104642/in-her-own-words-remembering-linda-brown-who-was-at-the-center-of-america-s-school-segregation-battle.

Dixon, Janelle Harris. “The Rank and File Women of the Black Panther Party and Their Powerful Influence.” Smithsonian Magazine. Last modified MARCH 4, 2019.

Dolak, Kevin. “What Happened To Deborah Johnson After The Killing of Black Panther Party Leader Fred Hampton?” True Crime Buzz. Last modified February 11, 2021. https://www.oxygen.com/true-crime-buzz/akua-njeri-nee-deborah-johnson-carried-on-fred-hamptons-legacy.

History Editors. “Brown v. Board of Education.” History. January 11, 2022. https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka.

National Archives Editors. “Women in Black Power.” National Archives. N.D. https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/black-power/women.

People’s History Podcast. “Women in the Black Panther Party.” https://anchor.fm/zinn-ed-project/episodes/Women-in-the-Black-Panther-Party-egek69/a-a2l7p92.

Robinson, Jo Ann. “Local Activists Call for a Bus Boycott in Montgomery,” SHEC: Resources for Teachers, accessed January 26, 2022, https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1140.

Sewell, Chan. “Recy Taylor, Who Fought for Justice After a 1944 Rape, Dies at 97.” New York Times. December 29, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/obituaries/recy-taylor-alabama-rape-victim-dead.html.

Spencer, Robyn Ceanne. “Engendering the Black Freedom Struggle: Revolutionary Black Womanhood and the Black Panther Party in the Bay Area, California.” Journal of Women's History 20, no. 1 (2008): 90–113. doi:10.1353/JOWH.2008.0006.

Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. Harper Collins Publishing: New York, NY, 1999.

Ware, Susan. American Women’s History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.