This site explores how Adeline Hornbek, single mother of four, defied traditional gender roles to become the owner of a successful ranch under the Homestead Act.

This is a first stop for using Library of Congress resources to do research in the field of American women's history. It presents some digital items; however, it serves primarily as a comprehensive guide to the entirety of the Library's holdings on women's history. It includes exhibits that feature women and how to find women within exhibits where they're not featured. Essays examine women as a symbol 1590-1800, the women's suffrage parade of 1913, and the equal rights amendment.

Dime novels written by women were once enormously popular with their readers, but the genre has been neglected for most of its history by scholars, collectors, and libraries. The genre suffers from the double burden of being both popular and written for working-class women. This project hopes to overcome the history of oversight to both the form and its readers by providing information about the novels themselves, the authors, the readers, and nineteenth century public reaction.
This site is a source of information about women’s dime novels and includes primary sources on dime novels, biographies for lesser-known authors, lists of relevant archival collections and cover art.

This site offers photos of suffrage parades and pickets, cartoons commenting on the movement, and portraits of Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and others.

This site provides a summary, history, and teaching activities related to the EEOC and this historic law, which forbade discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race in hiring, promoting, and firing.

This site invites you to explore the process of piecing together the lives of ordinary people in the past. It is an experimental, interactive case study based on the research that went into the book and film A Midwife’s Tale, both based upon the remarkable diary of 18th-century midwife/healer Martha Ballard. Although DoHistory is centered on the life of Martha Ballard, you can learn basic skills and techniques for interpreting fragments that survive from any period in history.

Dolley Madison Project is devoted to the life, letters, and legacy of the wife of our fourth president. As First Lady, Dolley Madison grew famous for her social graces and courage. By 1900 her name was being used for a range of commercial products. A chronology and essays about her life are provided, along with frequently asked questions and information about her letters and individuals with whom she corresponded.

offers photos, diaries, and timelines for learning about women pioneers, women during the Civil War, women's suffrage in the Progressive Era, eight women who served on the front during World War II, First Ladies, literature about women and discrimination, African-American women in the sciences, women in Muslim societies, Native American women writers, Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Mead, research in women's history, and more.

This lesson uses primary sources - diaries, letters, and photographs - to explore the experiences of women in the Civil War. By looking at a series of document galleries, the perspectives of slave women, plantation mistresses, female spies, and Union women emerge. Ultimately, students will understand the human consequences of this war for women.

Indian women influenced the expedition despite the fact that Lewis and Clark had little direct contact with them. All along the way, Lewis and Clark wrote that Indian women were oppressed; they failed, however, to see the various powers that these women possessed. Their understanding of a woman's role in society was based on a Euro-American model. Sacagawea was the only woman to accompany Lewis and Clark on their journey west. It is the goal of this unit to investigate both Sacagawea's role as the sole woman on the journey and the role of Indian women on the northern plains during this time period.

Zora Neale Hurston was one of the most important and celebrated figures to emerge from the Harlem Renaissance. Outspoken, spirited and gifted, Ms. Hurston was the most prolific African-American woman writer of the 1930's. Adapted from the theatrical biography of her life by Laurence Holder, this performance brings to life her story. The site includes a handout to help you and your students enjoy, prepare for, and discuss Zora. Included inside are background information, an introduction to our co-sponsors, Library of Congress LIVE and The American Place Theater, resources from the Library of Congress, and student activities.

Margery Kempe's spiritual biography is often called the first autobiography in English. A married woman who attempted to live a life devoted to Christ, Margery sought official Church recognition for her status as a spiritual woman and mystic, while continuing to live and travel in the secular world. She experienced intense emotional visionary encounters with Christ, which have at times a strikingly homely quality. Her Book, dictated by her to a scribe, records these visions as well as her travels in Europe and pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Her particular spiritual trial, according to her Book, was to be misrepresented, persecuted, and rejected by many of her clerical and lay peers. The recording of her spiritual life, despite severe difficulties and her own illiteracy, became a symbolic act in itself, representing both her claim to spiritual status and evidence of her special relationship with God. Rich in detail about the people and places Margery encountered, the Book is a rich and fascinating record of life in turbulent early 15th century England. Mapping Margery Kempe is a digital library of resources for studying the cultural and social matrix of The Book of Margery Kempe. A goal of this site is to provide access to the material culture of Kempe's 15th century world, and especially the dynamic world of the parish. Materials at this site include a unique and extensive database of images of East Anglican parish churches. Other resources include the Middle English text and related devotional writings and saints' lives; documents about daily life, politics and commerce in 15th century Lynn; maps of pilgrimage routes; a gallery of devotional images; and bibliography and guides for teaching.

This site looks at the work of this advocate for women's reproductive freedom. Sanger worked to help develop simpler, less costly, and more effective methods of birth control. Bibliographies, biographies, selected papers, a newsletter, and links to documents on and off the website help illustrate the life of this remarkable individualist.

Thirteen's Educational Publishing Department prepares educational kits to accompany certain television programming. These guides are available in print and, electronically, as PDFs (Portable Document Format), through the Web. This Teacher's Guide accompanies the program NEW YORK: A DOCUMENTARY FILM. The guide is intended to help use the film as a supplement to junior-high and high-school social-studies courses. Selected activities may also be used in language arts, music, and art classes. Key themes in the guide include governance, public health and other reforms, culture and public policy, immigration and race, economic life, and the role of women in New York City's history. The guide is intended to help students consider questions related to these themes, and to help them use what they've learned about the history of New York as a starting point for finding out more about their own community.

This site gives a facsimile of the handwritten petition of the suffragist, editor, and temperance leader. This lesson relates to the expression of First Amendment rights, including speech and petition, to the expansion of suffrage by means of the 19th Amendment, and to the amendment process described in Article V. This lesson correlates to the National History Standards and the National Standards for Civics and Social Sciences.

Through literature, both fiction and nonfiction, the learner will develop an understanding of and an appreciation for: Why pioneers left their homes and families to journey west; The hardships pioneers faced on the journey and as they built a new life on the frontier; Family life on the frontier; Building a community; Destruction of the way of life of the Plains Indians and their forced movement to reservations; Effects the pioneers had on the natural environment.

In the summer of 1991, Loren Schweninger, a professor of history, began traveling the South visiting courthouses and state archives in search of legal petitions related to race and slavery. He expected to find dry facts buried in legal terminology. What he actually found was a wealth of new information about peoples' lives and circumstances between the American Revolution and the Civil War. The petitions portray, in vivid and personal terms, the contrasts, ambivalence, contradictions, ironies, and ambiguities that comprise southern history. He began a project that became a journey. You can follow in his footsteps.
Among their many concerns perhaps none weighed more heavily on their minds than matters involving race and slavery. Only three thousand of these petitions have escaped the ravages of time, but the documents that survive provide a good representation from the Upper and Lower South, eastern and western states, and across the decades from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. They also offer a wealth of material on a variety of topics: slaves who were obedient and faithful to their owners, interracial sex, free people of color, the black family, and attitudes about relations between blacks and whites.

The film Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided and this companion Web site, The Time of the Lincolns, offer insights into topics in American history including women's rights, slavery, abolition, politics and partisanship, the growth of the industrial economy, and the Civil War. You can use part or all of the film, or delve into the rich resources available on this Web site to learn more, either in a classroom or on your own.

This activity was originally created for an online, video-conference produced by the National Digital Library Program in conjunction with the National First Ladies Library. The web pages were designed to provide the participating middle schools with resources and a structure to prepare for an online Bowl Event (an oral quiz/game in which teams compete by answering questions they have previously seen and answered). Turn-of-the-Century First Ladies, our selected topic, was chosen to take advantage of the expertise of the two presenting organizations. Any topic with many "factoids" would work as well. The activity can be used in a single classroom as a cooperative learning, team project. It can also be used as a cross classrooms event in a school with multiple classrooms per grade level.
This activity could be the engaging kick-off to a deeper study of women's history. It could be part of the study of our nation's turn-of-the-century Presidents. It could be the beginning or culmination of an in depth study of the role of First Ladies in our country's past, present and future. Or, the activity could be repurposed entirely, to develop a set of understandings around a different topic. Creative teachers will determine how much time is needed for their implementation of this activity. However, it is recommended that at least an hour be devoted to the Bowl Event and five to eight hours to research and preparation.