Women's History

    “Overlooked No More: Ethel Lina White, Master of Suspense Who Inspired Hitchcock” by Sarah Weinman, New York Times, April 17, 2025, archive.ph….

    White was a powerhouse of the genre in the 1930s, publishing more than 100 short stories and 17 novels, three of which were adapted into films, most notably Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes” (1938).…

    📽️ After watching Roberto Rossellini’s 1945 “Rome Open City” (Roma città aperta) this weekend, I’ve started on his “Paisan” (1946). This is only the second time I’ve seen this remarkable collection of six stories about soldiers and civilians during the Allied liberation of Italy, and it feels raw.

    Black and whitephoto of a young woman teacher and six children of varying ages, four of them girls and two of them boys. More details in the caption.

    New York World-Telegram photograph by Fred Palumbo, 1964:

    Miss April Lou, teacher at PS 1, Manhattan, with six Chinese children, recent arrivals from Hong Kong and Formosa [aka Taiwan], who are holding up placards giving his or her Chinese name (both in ideographs and in transliteration) and the [American English] name to be entered upon the official school records.

    Library of Congress, New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/94512334/.

    Yellow poster with blue and black text showing a young woman in white with a blue cap reaching out from a blue triangle, symbol of War Work Council relief efforts. The text reads 'REMEMBER THE GIRL BEHIND THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN' and 'Y.W.C.A.' At the very bottom in small letters: 'WAR WORK COUNCIL'.

    YWCA War Work Council poster, ca. 1917 (United States)

     

    Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002707403

    Color print of a stylish African American woman with blue hair, a small hat, and blue accents on her clothing. Her partial shadow on the brown striped wallpaper is also blue.

    "Girl with Blue Hair" by Blanche Grambs. Lithograph signed by artist, ca. 1935–43.

    Works Progress Administration (WPA) Art Collection, NYPL Digital Collections, image id 5181000.

    The Trump administration is slashing the State Department’s annual human rights report — cutting sections about the rights of women, the disabled, the LGBTQ+ community and more.

    The goal appears to be a far thinner report that meets the minimum standards required by the law, according to documents obtained by POLITICO, as well as a current and a former State Department official who were familiar with the plan.

    Nahal Toosi, Politico, March 19, 2025

    Photograph of two women and a child exiting a building with pots hanging on the outside wall. Maybe this was a place the Hungarian woman was considering?

    “Mexican miner’s wife and child are visited by another miner’s wife (Hungarian) who is interested in starting a maternal health clinic there. Scotts Run, Bertha Hill, West Virginia” by Marion Post Walcott for the Farm Security Administration, 1938. NYPL Digital Collections, image id 58749987.

    A 1943 Photo of Welders for Women's History Month

    Four African American women welders employed to work on the Liberty ship SS George Washington Carver, kneeling and holding welding equipment. Bits of the port and shipyard are also visible, as are three men, two black and one white.

    “Skilled women workers helped build SS George Washington Carver.” Photo by E. F. Joseph for the Office of War Information, Kaiser Shipyards, Richmond, California, ca. 1943.

    With nearly 1,000 Negro women employed as burners, welders, scalers and in other capacities at the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, Calif., women war workers played an important part in the construction of the Liberty Ship, SS George Washington Carver, launched on May 7, 1943. Welders Alivia Scott, Hattie Carpenter and Flossie Burtos await an opportunity to weld their first piece of steel on the ship.

    Repository: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYPL Digital Collections, image id 1206635.

    Poster from an Antiwar, Lesbian, Feminist Fugitive, ca. 1970

    Black and white poster showing a drawing of Susan Saxe and the following message from her: 'First, a greeting to all my sisters. Courage, especially to all of my sisters underground in America, stay free, stay strong. I intend to fight on in every way as a lesbian, a feminist and an Amazon. The love I share with my sisters is a far more formidable weapon than the police state can bring against us. Keep growing, keep strong. I am a free woman, and I can keep strong. Pass the word. I am unafraid.'

    Poster with a message by Susan Saxe, depicted in the drawing.1 Based on the text, the poster is probably from around 1970, when its author, a Brandeis senior and antiwar activist, went on the lam after robbing a bank and a National Guard Armory. On the FBI’s most wanted list, she was captured in 1975 and did seven years in prison.2 Her roommate, Katherine Ann Power, surrendered in 1980.3


    1. Via Library of Congress, Yanker Poster Collection, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016648550/↩︎

    2. Susan Saxe has a sparse Wikipedia entry. She was Nancy Gertner’s first case, which the latter writes about in In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate Beacon Press, 2011), chap. 1 (sample with salient details). ↩︎

    3. Lucinda Franks, “Return of the Fugitive,” The New Yorker, June 5, 1994, https://archive.ph/5mJ5P↩︎

    Joe Stieb has posted some good history recommendations to help counter Hegseth’s bizarre scrubbing of Department of Defense webpages of race, gender, sexuality, and other content verboten by Trump. https://archive.ph/zLEcs

    Four women in a row with their backs to the camera dressed in indigenous Pueblo dress with a large United States Army seal in the middle of their backs and related service patches.

    Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, July 18, 2015:

    Members of the Native American Women Warriors, a Pueblo, Colorado-based association of active and retired American Indians in U.S. military service, at a Colorado Springs Native American Inter Tribal Powwow and festival in that central Colorado city.

    Credit: Gates Frontiers Fund Colorado Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Further details, including names and ranks, at https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2015633463/.

    Apropos of Russia’s meat assaults, which throw their soldiers' lives callously away:

    In the town of Polyarnye Zori in Russia’s Murmansk region, members of the country’s ruling United Russia party marked International Women’s Day by giving flowers and meat grinders to the mothers of soldiers killed in the war against Ukraine.

    Story via Meduza: “United Russia party gifts meat grinders to dead soldiers’ mothers,” meduza.io/en….

    Orange, white, black, brown, and tan poster depicting nine women of various backgrounds engaged in different activities, including arts, activism, and blue-collar work. The accompanying text reads: 'Radical Women Annual Conference – 1976'. 'A New Era for Women Workers, Minority Women and Lesbians': 'Women in the Labor Movement', 'Feminism and the Minority Woman', 'Gays and the Class Struggle.' 'Panels; Workshops; Role Playing; Dinner & Party, Saturday.' Held on Sat. and Sun., October 9–10, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, along with addresses, phone numbers, and a few more details.

    A New Era for Women Workers, Minority Women and Lesbians. 1976 poster by a Seattle organization called Radical Women.

    Via Library of Congress, Yanker Poster Collection, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016649885/.

    Two Suffragettes

    1. “Fay Hubbard, 13-year Old Suffragette” in New York on February 9, 1910.

      “Suffragette! Suffragette!” This is the cry of little Fay Hubbard as she goes through the crowd at the suffragette meetings in New York selling copies of the paper… Miss Hubbard is a niece of Mrs. E. Ida Williams, the recording secretary of the Suffragette…

    2. Mary Edwards Walker (1832–1919). Dr. Walker served as a surgeon in the U.S. Army during the Civil War. She was a Medal of Honor recipient, a suffragette, and a dress reformer.


    Images via Library of Congress, PPOC, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/92510578/ and https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2005684835/.

    Gladys is a tired Black woman. She is sitting in a wooden chair, her side to the back, leaning on her arm on the back. The floor of the room is wooden. There appears to be natural light coming from a window just out of sight. A desk or dresser is in the corner with a lot of books on top between bookends.

    “Gladys” by Will Barnet, 1936, for the Federal Art Project NYC WPA. Signed, dated, and stamped print from engraving.

    Via the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL Digital Collections, image 5179795.

    Photo is described in common caption. Ernestine Eckstein can be seen from the side, one Black woman in the midst of white men.

    Photo is described in common caption. In this one Ernestine Eckstein is facing forward and enough of her sign is visible to deduce the rest.
    Photo is described in common caption. In this one Barbara Gittings is facing forward, and her sign reads

    Intersections: three photos of Ernestine Eckstein in a 1965 picket line outside the White House protesting Federal discrimination against gay people in civil and military service and their obtaining security clearances. Her sign reads, “DENIAL OF EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY IS IMMORAL.” Eckstein was a Black woman, whereas most of the other picketers appear to have been white men. Another lesbian activist, white, is visible in one photo: Barbara Gittings. The photographer was Gitting’s white partner, Kay Tobin.

    Photos via the Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen Gay History Papers and Photographs Collection, NYPL Digital Collections, images 1605765, 1605764, and 1605766

    World War Two Poster Marking the Dignity and Humanity of Black Women on the Home Front

    Poster. The women described in the detailed caption below are separated into different quadrants with the help of a big 'V', which itself is underlined by the text 'for victory'.

    The American Front for Victory – This poster from World War Two operates on two levels. First, it emphasizes the contribution of “The American Front” to the victory for which the nation was fighting. American front because this was about the home front, the people, many of them women, contributing to victory in industry, in agriculture, through service, and with their savings. Second, the name makes an important statement about the women it pictures working. They are Black. In large parts of the country, racist Americans cast the fitness of Black people as American citizens in doubt, to say nothing of questioning their very humanity.1 Here, by contrast, four Black women are depicted doing dignified work for the national cause.

    Moving clockwise from the top, one woman, wearing some kind of civilian uniform, is holding a bucket marked “save” and is participating in either the sale or purchase of “Defense Bonds”; another is working a potato field with the words “strong bodies” underneath; there is a woman in a nurse’s uniform above the label “volunteer service”; and a woman can be seen working on an airplane, perhaps installing its propeller. This is a poster proclaiming the importance of the home front and the dignity and honor of the Black women fighting on it.

    Source: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL, image id psnypl_scf_061.


    1. See a related poster for American men on this blog, one of them Black, captioned “Bonds and justice will smash the Nazis. Not bondage!" ↩︎

    Thick book: A Companion to Women's Military History, ed. Barton C. Hacker and Margaret Vining
    This is not a book I would have considered controversial even two weeks ago. Now I'm not so sure. Imagine having it on your desk in the Pentagon when the gender police come in. Women as part of military history despite Orange Oaf's decrees!

    A black man's left forearm and fist and a white man's left forearm and fist shown striking a big swaztika. The black man has a broken chain dangling from his wrist. The text reads, 'Bonds and justice will smash the Nazis. Not bondage!'

    Bonds and justice will smash the Nazis, not bondage!

    World War Two poster – The word "bonds" can work three ways here: the bonds or chains pictured here as broken, the bonds that unite us, and U.S. war bonds. The second of these offers the most powerful contrast to "bondage."

    Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Art and Artifacts Division, NYPL, image id psnypl_scf_065.

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