Primary Source Spotlight: Women’s History

Teaching resources

• Primary Source Learning: Women in U.S. History
• Primary Source Learning: Women’s Road to the Vote

Primary source sets

• A look back at female police officers image set
• Primary Source Spotlight: Woman Suffrage collections
• Women in Science & Technology select primary sources & teacher’s guide
• Woman’s Land Army of America

Activists

• Jane Addams
• Susan B. Anthony
• Clara Barton and the Red Cross
• Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell
• Carrie S. Burnham
• Shirley Chisholm
• Dorothea Dix
• Betty Friedan
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg
• Emma Goldman
• Helen Keller
• Belva Lockwood
• Carrie Nation
• Patsy Mink
• Lucretia Mott
• Rosa Parks
• Alice Paul
• Jeannette Rankin
• Sonia Sotomayor
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Mary Church Terrell
• Harriet Tubman
• Sojourner Truth
• Ida B. Wells
• Frances Willard & the WTCU

Artists

• The Alcotts
• Marian Anderson
• Gwendolyn Brooks
• Esther Bubley
• Emily Dickinson
• Ella Fitzgerald
• Dorothy and Lillian Gish
• Martha Graham
• Julia Ward Howe
• Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Marjorie Kinnan Rawlins
• Dorothea Lange
• Jenny Lind
• Gabriela Mistral
• Zora Neale Hurston
• Patricia Smith
• Edna St. Vincent Millay
• Gertrude Stein
• Phillis Wheatley
• Sarah Winnemucca

Trailblazers

• American Female Pilots
  • Amelia Earhart
  • Harriet Quimby
  • Katherine Stinson the Flying Girl
• Constance Baker Motley
• Marie Curie
• Althea Gibson & Tennis
• Fannie Farmer & Cooking
• Julia Archibald Holmes, Mountaineer
• Libby Riddles & the Iditarod
• Sonia Sotomayor
• Susie King Taylor: The Courage of an African American Nurse and Teacher
• Kathy Whitworth, Champion Golfer
• First Ladies
• Gibson Girls
• Mothers
• Teachers
• Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) in World War II

Library collections

• Hannah Arendt Papers
• The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip
• Miller NAWSA Suffrage Scrapbooks, 1897-1911
• By Popular Demand: “Votes for Women” Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920
• Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921
• Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman’s Party
• Women Photojournalists
• Works by Civil War Era African American Women
• The Zora Neale Hurston Plays, 1925-1944

Image sets

• Carol M. Highsmith Archive
• Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” Photographs
• Esther Bubley’s Photographs
• First Ladies of the United States – Selected Images
• Photographs of Women During the Civil War – Selected Images
• Pictorial Americana: Women’s Rights – Selected Images
• Rosie Pictures: American Women Workers During World War II – Selected Images
• Suffrage Images
• Votes for Women: The Struggle for Women’s Suffrage
• Women

Chronicling America Topic Guides: timelines & select newspaper articles

• Alice Paul (1910-1922)
• Alma Boone Little (1914-1915)
• Belle Boyd (1862-1900)
• The Bloomer (1851-1897)
• Bloomer Girls Baseball (1897-1909)
• Carrie Chapman Catt (1900-1920)
• Carrie Nation (1900-1911)
• Clara Barton (1881-1904)
• Constance Kopp (1914-1916)
• Crystal Eastman (1909-1920)
• Dollar Princesses (1874-1910)
• Dorothy Dix (1904-1920)
• Edith Wilson (1896-1920)
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1850-1912)
• Emma Goldman: McKinley Assassination Conspirator? (1901)
• Female Pilots (1911-1918)
• Female Spies in World War I (1915-1922)
• Flappers (1919-1922)
• Frances Cleveland (1885-1891)
• The Gibson Girl. The standard of feminine beauty. (1895-1908)
• Golden Flyer Suffragettes (1916)
• Harriet Tubman (1869-1913)
• Helen Bertram. Prima donna of comic opera. (1887-1908)
• Helen Keller (1888-1920)
• Hello Girls (1898-1922)
• Ida B. Wells (1892-1909)
• Jane Addams (1905-1920)
• Katherine Stinson (1912-1921)
• The Kidnapping of Ellen Stone (1901-1902)
• Margaret Sanger (1915-1922)
• Mother Jones (1994-1921)
• Mother’s Day (1909-1922)
• Nellie Bly (1887-1922)
• Queen Victoria (1837-1901)
• Sissieretta Jones: African-American Soprano (1889-1911)
• Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (1911-1914)
• Typhoid Mary (1907-1915)
• Susan B Anthony (1883-1920)
• Victoria Woodhull (1871-1908)

Special presentations

• Pages from Her Story
• Timeline: One Hundred Years Toward Suffrage
• Timeline: Reformers and Crusaders (1850-1880)
• Timeline: Traveling on the Overland Trails (1843-1860)
• Women Pioneers
• Timeline: Women in the Union Armies
• Timeline: Women’s Suffrage in the Progressive Era

Online exhibitions

• American Beauties: Drawings from the Golden Age of Illustration
• Blondie Gets Married
• Canadian Counterpoint: Illustrations by Anita Kunz
• A Colored Women in a White World: Mary Church Terrell
• Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine: Two Kids from Brooklyn
• The Diary of a Confederate Woman
• The Gibson Girl’s America
• Humor’s Edge: Cartoons by Ann Telnaes
• I Love Lucy: An American Legend
• Jazz Singers
• Margaret Mead: Human Nature and the Power of Culture
• #Opera Before Instagram: Portraits, 1890-1955
• Petal From the Rose: Illustrations by Elizabeth Shippen Green
• Politics and the Dancing Body
• The Water-Babies: Illustrations by Jessie Willcox Smith
• The Woman’s Bible
• Women and the War Effort
• Women’s Trade Union Seal
• Women’s War Relief
• The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention
• Women Come to the Front: Journalists, Photographers, & Broadcasters During WWII

Veterans History Project resources

• The WASP: First in Flight
• Women of Four Wars
• Women Serving in Combat: A Panel Discussion
• Women at War

Library blog posts

4 Corners of the World

• Reflections on Symbols of Women’s History in Modern Context April 30, 2016

From the Catbird Seat

• Phillis Wheatley March 1, 2012

Headlines & Heroes

• Alice Guy-Blaché: Cinema’s First Woman Director in Newspapers January 26, 2022
• Historical Women in STEM March 8, 2022
• Women of Winter Sports: The First U.S. Olympic Ski Medalists January 20, 2022

In Custodia Legis 

• Equal Pay Day in Germany March 7, 2022
• Kvennafridagurinn – The Day Icelandic Women Went on Strike March 8, 2022
• Promoting the General Welfare: Frances Perkins November 19, 2020
• Women in History: Lawyers and Judges (international) March 6, 2015
• Women in History: Elected Representatives March 4, 2015
• Women in History: Voting Rights March 3, 2015
• Women in History Month March 25, 2013
• Women in History Month March 8, 2011

In the Muse

• Florence Price’s Fantasie Nègre No. 1 March 1, 2022
• Women’s History Month: Women Composers in the Music Division March 29, 2010
• Women’s History Month: Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel March 24, 2010
• Women’s History Month: Katherine Dunham March 8, 2010

Inside Adams

• Celebrating Librarian Extraordinaire Ruth S. Freitag March 12, 2014
• Celebrate Women (Part 2- Women in Science and Engineering) March 12, 2010
• Celebrate Women! (part 1) March 9, 2010
• Fabulous Women in History

Library of Congress

• Celebrating Creative Women: Rare and Special Collections March 26, 2014
• Celebrating Women: On Your Mark! Get Set! Mush! March 20, 2014
• Celebrating Women’s History: Still Standing – The Story of Tammy Duckworth March 13, 2014
• Pics of the Week: Celebrating Women’s History March 6, 2014
• Trailblazing American Women on Quarters January 24, 2022

Picture This

• Ann Rosener, Documenting the Home Front March 20, 2013
• Women Architects and Designers in the HABS/HAER/HALS Collections March 4, 2022

Teaching with the Library of Congress

• A Civil War Nurse’s Memoir: Discerning Women’s Experiences February 22, 2018
• Citizenship Schools for Women in 1920 September 17, 2020
• Exploring the History of Women in STEM with Primary Sources March 5, 2020
• Framing the Lives of Civil War Nurses August 1, 2019
• Historic Codes, Ciphers, and Computational Thinking, Part II – the Women Codebreakers of WWII April 3, 2018
• Primary Sources and Women’s History Month: A Perfect Match February 18, 2016
• Students Investigate the 19th Amendment’s Influence on the 1920 Election July 25, 2019
• Studying Images of World War I Nurses: The Nurturer in a Red Cross Poster August 11, 2020
• A Suffragist Poetically Asks: “Are Women People?” February 25, 2021
• Women’s History Month: Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Suffragist March of 1913 with Primary Sources February 14, 2013
• Women Soldiers in the Civil War, Part 2: Their Service Remembered in Library of Congress Primary Sources February 21, 2013
• Women Soldiers in the Civil War, Part 1: Going Behind the Gender Lines February 19, 2013

Unfolding History

• From Suffrage Day to Women’s Equality Day: A Brief History of Celebrating August 26 August 25, 2022 

Worlds Revealed: Geography & Maps

• Women in Geography and Cartography

Videos

Women in the News

• Women in the news with Adelaide Hawley 1950-10-27
• Women in the news with Betty Gray November 1950

Women Writers Webcasts

• Isabel Allende
• Rae Armantrout
• Maria Celeste Arrarás
• Judy Blume
• Donna Britt
• Sandra Cisneros
• Patricia Cornwell
• Anna Dewdney
• Kirstin Downey
• Ree Drummond
• Maria Dueñas
• Margarita Engle
• Kathleen Ernst
• Linda Greenhouse
• Joy Harjo
• Charlaine Harris
• Ellen Hopkins
• Eloisa James
• Tayari Jones
• Margot Livesey
• Adele Logan Alexander
• Lois Lowry
• Melissa Marr
• Andrea Mitchell
• Sue Monk Kidd
• Pat Mora
• Shelia Moses
• Anna Mwalagho
• Azar Nafisi
• Michele Norris
• Mary Pope Osborne
• Nell Irvin Painter
• Patricia Polacco
• Anna Quindlen
• Esmé Raji Codell
• Cokie Roberts
• Marilynne Robinson
• Laura Amy Schlitz
• Lisa Scottoline
• Patricia Smith
• Rebecca Stead
• Maggie Stiefvater
• Susan Tejada
• Raina Telgemeier
• Jacqueline Woodson
• Literature to Life: Zora! (Zora Neale Hurston)

More woman-focused recorded webcast videos

• Afghan Women’s Stories: the Problematics of Cover
• American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who Shaped Our Country
• Catch the Suffragists’ Spirit: The Millers’ Suffrage Scrapbooks
• Following the Drum: Women at the Valley Forge Encampment
• Frances Perkins, the Woman Behind FDR
• Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years
• Globalization and Women in Muslim Societies
• Legislating in Heels–An Anecdotal Journal: The Honorable Constance Connie Morella
• In the Mediterranean Mode: Israeli Women Composers
• A Modern Queen in a Traditional Role (Nnabagereka Sylvia Nagginda: Queen of Buganda, Republic of Uganda)
• My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran
• Resourceful Women: A Library of Congress Symposium
• Rosie the Riveter: Real Women Workers in WWII
• A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told Through Food, Recipes and Remembrances
• Tunisia: Celebrating Fifty Years of Women’s Emancipation
• Using Fair Trade Principles to Empower Women in Northern Uganda
• Women in Iran: Past, Present and Future
• Women from the Nigerien Sahel
• Women in the Persian Gulf War
• Women in Science and Engineering
• Women Taking the Lead to Save Our Planet
• Women Who Dare
• The Women Who Kept the Songs from India to Israel: The Musical Heritage of Cochin
• Women’s Activism and Social Change: Documenting the Lives of Margaret Sanger & Jane Addams
• Women’s History and Food History: New Ways of Seeing American Life
• Women’s History Month Celebration: Women’s Art — Women’s Vision

Teaching History Her Way podcast