"Moving Forward Together!": Amplifying Women's History and Experiences
Moving Forward Together! Women Educating & Inspiring Generations
-National Women’s History Alliance 2025 Women’s History Month theme
Researchers will uncover diverse voices to build historical narratives for "...educating and inspiring generations" in Readex primary source collections. Continue reading for a spectrum of women's stories revealed in primary sources from the struggle to gain equal rights to the role of popular culture in moving women forward.
Equality and Suffrage
"Come west, young woman, come west!" Susanna Salter and her unlikely rise to first woman U.S. mayor
...If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion... [Abigail Adams] was right—women would eventually reach a point where they would demand equal representation and a political voice. It took more than a century... read more
"She is one of the best representations of the educated Indian": Zitkála-Šá and her Early Years
...Zitkála-Šá was a writer, editor, translator, musician, educator, and political activist in her lifetime. As she dove into the secular, political world she became well known by her anglicized and married name, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin. Even so, she never gave up her culture and became a strong advocate for Indigenous civil rights and citizenship... read more
Women’s Suffrage in the U.S.: The Long Fight for Passage of the 19th Amendment
...vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on the account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” The 19th Amendment is a simply written article to the U.S. Constitution that guarantees all American women the right to vote… read more
“Through the tears, confident and determined”: American Women Get the Vote One Century Ago
...August 18, 1920, was a momentous day for the women of America. When Tennessee ratified the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the act granting equal suffrage for women, which had been passed by Congress earlier in… read more
‘The voice of female sorrow’: Highlights from Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922
...a drawer full of letters, and a few books &c. Another, Mr. Horn, stood in the parlor and threatened the mob with a pistol. He drove off the women (!!!) who were trying to set fire to the house with torches, but was finally obliged… read more
Nerves of Steal: Cassie Chadwick, “Patron Saint of Confidence Women”
...burn scar on right elbow. Ah, but those eyes were sufficiently persuasive for her to intimidate even her prison matron, and hold both men and women under her sway. “Cassie L. Chadwick, or ‘Mme. De Vere,’ for that was the name I knew… read more
Leisure, Culture, and Entertainment
"The Diving Venus": Annette Kellerman, a Beautiful Example of Female Athleticism
...Known for her physique, Kellerman challenged societal norms by encouraging women to swim—in comfortable swimwear. She helped make swimming not only socially acceptable but also popular for women. Kellerman became an international sensation and a renowned icon... read more
“Shed Underwear Says Suffragist": Fashion as Social Commentary in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries
...The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” That appears to have been the inspiration for many religious diatribes against women who sought to adorn themselves. An anonymous tract, published in 1722: “ Hoop-Petticoats… read more
Mauricia de Tiers and Her Sensational Dip of Death: The Fearless Young Frenchwoman who Thrilled Americans in the Early 20th Century
...Portugal, was fatally hurt. Her automobile left the track and crashed into the arena. Her chest was crushed and her legs were broken. Many women among the spectators fainted. A part of the crowd present made a demonstration and… read more
‘Women Who Wheel’: How the Bicycle Craze of the 1890s Helped to Expand Women’s Freedom
...In the late 19th century women began participating in the bicycle craze which men had enjoyed for two decades. This craze did not last long, but for women it was exciting and liberating. It was mostly affluent society women who defied the naysayers and avidly took to the streets on wheels … read more
Female Playwrights in Nineteenth-Century American Drama: Works by Clara Harriet Sherwood, Nellie H. Bradley, and More Than 100 Other Women Dramatists
...Among the playwrights in Nineteenth-Century American Drama there are scores of women. The genres of their plays are as varied as those of their male counterparts, although more of the works for children and classrooms are by … read more
Fostering Understanding—and Children: Pearl S. Buck Interprets China for Americans and Chinese Alike
...After she won a Pulitzer Prize for that book in 1932, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938, she was regarded as a celebrity and a public intellectual as well. To many women she was a beacon of the equal rights movement; for many mixed-race children she was… read more
Women and Work
Nellie Bly and the 'Stunt Girls' that Smashed Barriers in Turn-of-the-Century Journalism
...Bly moved to New York City in 1887. Determined to become a serious journalist and after numerous rejections, she landed a job at Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, the New York World. To prove herself at the World Bly accepted the assignment that would define her career... read more
From the Readex Report: Surveilling Du Bois; a Famous Football Club; and Black Woman Journalists
...those that pressed the urgent matter of ending American bondage. Jennifer Harris has demonstrated how such newspapers followed African-Canadian women writers and speakers such as Amelia E. Johnson, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, and Charlotte… read more
Hetty Green, “Financial Amazon” of the Gilded Age
...Green was in the feminist vanguard as she succeeded brilliantly on her own terms as a financier, a profession that was a bastion of male privilege. Her power became tangible (and deadly) when she was granted the rare privilege of carrying a gun in New York City for self-defense. And like a proper feminist iconoclast she was immediately criticized for her temerity... read more
“An equality of wages”: The Evolution of Working Women’s Rights, as Captured by Early American Publications
...Among the United States’ earliest and most fervent supporters of working women’s rights was an Irish immigrant named Mathew Carey, who arrived in Philadelphia in 1784. In that city he established a publishing business … and pamphlets… read more
Women in War: From the American Indian Wars to the American Civil War
...The experiences of women in wartime have been less well documented than those of men. Their contributions, their sufferings and heroism merit closer attention. The wealth of digitized primary sources in Readex collections offer fresh… read more
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