There are few individuals in American history with as divided a legacy as Margaret Sanger. For many, she was a pioneer of women’s health, an important birth control activist, and founder of Planned Parenthood. For others, Sanger represents the immorality of feminism and insidious evil of reproductive choice. Yet others Read more…
Published in 1968, Anne Moody’s autobiography Coming of Age in Mississippi details her journey from a cotton plantation in the deep south to becoming a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. At times heartbreaking and other times inspiring, Moody’s memoir explores how an individual faced with enormous– and seemingly insurmountable Read more…
On December 16th, 1929, thousands of Igbo women gathered outside the colonial government compound in Opobo. They were there to demand the end of British imperialism in Eastern Nigeria, though the British seemed oblivious to the intention and motivations of these women. What they saw were erratic, reactive women wielding Read more…
“Spanish American” Nina Otero-Warren (1881-1965) was a suffragist, Progressive educator, woman’s club member, public health and social welfare board member, and writer. She worked for formal and informal mediation between Hispanos, Anglo Americans, and Indians. She was instrumental in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, was the first Hispanic woman Read more…
Tea, it turns out, is a bottomless commodity history. As historian Erika Rappaport notes, at various times over the last two thousand years, “In Asia, the Near East, Europe, and North America, tea was a powerful medicine, a dangerous drug, a religious and artistic practice, a status symbol, an aspect Read more…
You might think that the story of Pharaoh Sety I of Egypt’s 19th Dynasty ends with his death. But you’d be wrong, at least according to one 20th-century British woman, Dorothy Eady. Dorothy, who believed herself to be the reincarnation of Sety’s lover Bentreshyt, is the only reason we know Read more…
The years 1896-1910 of the American woman’s suffrage movement are sometimes referred to as the doldrums because of an apparent lack of progress during the years. However, revised scholarship has shown that these were in fact the years where a lot of uncelebrated work was done for the cause. Today Read more…
In the late 20th century, white Americans flocked to New Age spirituality, collecting crystals, hugging trees, and finding their places in the great Medicine Wheel. Many didn’t realize – or didn’t care – that much of this spirituality was based on the spiritual faiths and practices of Native American tribes. Read more…
This is a special episode researched and written by one of our interns, Olivia Langa. To find out more about the everyday lives of women in coal mining families we must look at the songs of less popular female Appalachian singers from the 1930s. One such place to look is Read more…
Elizabeth: It’s 1926 and you’re in a mine cage, a type of elevator contraption that slowly descends down the shaft of a coal mine. The air gets colder and colder as the light disappears from above and you are plunged into darkness, lit only by a single dim bulb attached Read more…