Jerrie Cobb poses next to a Mercury spaceship capsule.

How the Mercury 13 Fought to Get Women in Space

In 1962, the House of Representatives convened a special subcommittee to determine if women should be admitted into NASA’s space program.
Christine Jorgenson

A History of Transphobia in the Medical Establishment

At a time when trans people who wanted surgery needed to trust doctors, transphobia made it difficult.
Bowl from 12th century Egypt

How Medieval Arabic Literature Viewed Lesbians

As far back as the ninth century, doctors and poets wrote about women who loved women without calling them deviants.
:A woman drinking from a cup of tea

The Anxious “China Hunters” of the Nineteenth Century

After the Civil War, some elite women became obsessed with collecting antique china, the better to connect themselves to illustrious histories.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett

The Alpha Suffrage Club and Black Women’s Fight for the Vote

Black women's experiences in the suffrage movement show that the Nineteenth Amendment marked one event in the fight for the vote, not an endpoint.
Chicano Moratorium Committee antiwar demonstrators, East Los Angeles, 1970

Police Versus the Chicano Moratorium March of 1970

Despite police violence against Chicano demonstrators in Los Angeles, the movement was not deterred.
City Federation of Colored Women's Clubs of Jacksonville, State Meeting, Palatka, Florida

Women’s Clubs and the “Lost Cause”

Women's clubs were popular after the Civil War among white and Black women. But white clubwomen used their influence to ingrain racist curriculum in schools.
Le Passage des Brisants à Hawaï

Did White People Really Revive Surfing?

Contrary to the widespread idea that white missionaries stamped out the sport, evidence suggests that Native Hawai‘ians never stopped surfing.
John Frost and daughter listening to radio in their home. Tehama County, California

The People Who Thought Farmers Without Radios Were Rubes

In the 1920s, some people thought that the new invention of radio would make American farmers less "backward."
Interior of a London Coffee-house, 17th century

The News Junkies of the Eighteenth Century

Hooked on viral news (or is it gossip?), today's Twitter hordes owe a lot to history's coffeehouses.