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Archive: March 2019 (4 Posts)

A child carrying a bundle of newspapers in one hand, the other arm held high with a copy of the Anchorage Daily Times, the headline reading

Gladys Pyle: American Trailblazer & “Ultra Modern” Woman

Posted by: Megan Halsband

This is a guest post by Valerie Haeder, a reference librarian in the Serial and Government Publications Division. South Dakota’s Gladys Pyle was the first woman elected to the South Dakota House and South Dakota’s first female U.S. Senator.  But she wouldn’t have cared about such distinctions as much as she did about getting things …

A photo of a young woman is highlighted with rays of light coming from behind the image. The rays of light continue behind text to the left of the young woman.

Radium Girls: Living Dead Women

Posted by: Arlene Balkansky

Catherine Wolfe Donohue is not a well-known name, but in the late 1930s newspapers featured her as she lay dying. She was among the women who painted luminous numbers on watch, clock, and instrument dials using radium-laced paint in factories in New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut. Dubbed “Radium Girls” and “Living Dead,” they suffered radium …

A child carrying a bundle of newspapers in one hand, the other arm held high with a copy of the Anchorage Daily Times, the headline reading

Let’s Talk Comics: Superheroines

Posted by: Megan Halsband

Whether you call them superheroines, female superheroes, or just superheroes, there are many female characters in comics whose powers, reputation, actions, and history make them more than ordinary. While Wonder Woman might be known best, a number of other superheroines made their first appearance in comics early on in the 1940s. Fantomah (February 1940), Lady …

A child carrying a bundle of newspapers in one hand, the other arm held high with a copy of the Anchorage Daily Times, the headline reading

Happy International Women’s Day!

Posted by: Amber Paranick

This Friday, March 8, 2019, is International Women’s Day and today we return to our historical newspaper archives for stories featuring change-making women in newspapers searchable in Chronicling America, the Library’s freely available database that provides access to historic United States newspapers published between 1789 and 1963. As the Library’s digital collection grows to 15 …