When Breastfeeding Was a Civic Duty
Think people are judgmental of mothers now? In the 18th- and 19th-centuries, mothers who bottle-fed their babies were blamed for many of society's ills.
The Magazine That Put Children in Their Place
Children's literature hasn't always been about whimsy. This early magazine sought to retrench the elite in the publishing and education industries.
The Bizarre Victorian Diaries of Cullwick and Munby
Arthur Munby was an upper-class man of letters who "collected" working class women, including his servant Hannah Cullwick, whom he married in 1873.
The Bisbee Deportations
According to one scholar, the 1917 deportation in Bisbee, AZ wasn't "about labor relations or race or gender: it was about all of them."
The Woman Who Refused to Leave a Whites-Only Streetcar
In 1854, Elizabeth Jennings rode the streetcar of her choice, in an early civil rights protest that led to desegregating public transportation in NYC.
Black Radicalism’s Complex Relationship with Japanese Empire
Black intellectuals in the U.S.—from W. E. B. Du Bois to Marcus Garvey—had strong and divergent opinions on Japanese Empire.
Why the Equal Rights Amendment Hasn’t Been Ratified Yet
Suffragist Alice Paul proposed the ERA in 1923. Congress approved it in the 1970s. So why isn't the amendment part of the Constitution?
The Women Who Tried to Prevent the Trail of Tears
In the 1830s, American women, including Catherine Beecher, worked to fight Andrew Jackson’s genocidal Indian Removal campaign.
How Global Colonialism Shaped Segregation
One of the first US municipal laws demanding residential segregation, passed in 1910 in Baltimore, has roots in European colonial policies.
When Reading Inspired Women to Change History
The "Friday Night" group was a cohort of prominent nineteenth century Baltimore women who met each week to read, write, and debate social issues.