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Category: Women’s History

Black and white image of Nellie Bly, newspaper journalist, in a Victorian-style, houndstooth button-down dress holding a handbag in her left hand and a hat in her right hand.

“Behind Asylum Bars:” Nellie Bly Reporting from Blackwell’s Island.

Posted by: Amber Paranick

“Could I pass a week in the insane ward at Blackwell’s Island? I said I could and I would. And I did.” In 1887, investigative journalist for the New York World newspaper Nellie Bly went undercover to expose the dreadful conditions at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum, a mental institution on Blackwell’s Island. Read more about Bly’s fearless investigation and how her work forever changed the field of journalism.

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

Good News!

Posted by: Amber Paranick

Presenting feel-good news stories to round out our posts for the year and say farewell to 2020 on a positive note! Hopefully, these uplifting, heartfelt, funny, and touching stories from yesterday’s news in Chronicling America* serve as a diversion from the darker news of this year… In 1947, after scouring newspaper stories around the country, …

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

Fluffy Ruffles in the Popular Press

Posted by: Amber Paranick

This post is a collaboration with Dr. Christina Burr, Associate Professor in History at the University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, where she teaches courses in North American Popular Culture, Women’s History, and a Graduate Seminar on the Modern Girl. Dr. Burr and I met while she was conducting research on-site at the Library …

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

“Women Have the Vote!”

Posted by: Amber Paranick

One hundred years ago this week, on November 2, 1920, the United States presidential election was held. It was the first presidential election held after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. Incidentally – and as holders of the Library’s main newspaper collections, we can’t <not> mention it – …