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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 …
Posted in: Biography, Digitized Newspapers, Newspapers, Women's History
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 …
Posted in: Digitized Newspapers, Newspapers, Women's History
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 …
Posted in: Biography, Newspapers, Women's History
Posted by: Heather Thomas
Sissieretta Jones sang for kings, presidents, and to audiences around the world, becoming the highest paid African-American entertainer of the late 19th century. She headlined at Carnegie Hall and was hailed as one of the greatest sopranos of her time, yet she never performed on the operatic stage. She was born Matilda Sissieretta Joyner in …
Posted in: African American History, Biography, Digitized Newspapers, Newspapers, Women's History
Posted by: Amber Paranick
Coined as the Hello Girls as early as the late 19th century, female telephone switchboard operators were widely known as having gentle and polite voices regardless of demanding and impatient callers. During World War I, French-speaking Hello Girls were enlisted to improve wartime communication, transmitting crucial information over a battlefield phone system to troops on …
Posted in: Digitized Newspapers, Newspapers, Women's History, World War I
Posted by: Heather Thomas
Theodosia Burr Alston, the beloved daughter of disgraced vice president Aaron Burr, left the port of Georgetown, South Carolina on the schooner Patriot in 1812 and was never seen again. Throughout the 19th century, newspapers titillated readers with lurid stories of her alleged fate, including captivity, murder, and deathbed confessions of former pirates. Yet her …
Posted in: Digitized Newspapers, Mystery, Newspapers, Women's History
Posted by: Megan Halsband
Legendary artist Marie Severin passed away a few weeks ago, and I wanted to take a moment to share some of her works that are available at the Library of Congress and highlight her decades-long career in the comic book industry. Marie began working as a colorist for EC (Entertaining Comics) in the 1950’s and …
Posted in: Biography, Comic Books, Women's History
Posted by: Amber Paranick
Canadian-born Gladys Louise Smith was just 5 years old when her father died, plunging her family into poverty. Gladys’ mother, Charlotte, a classic stage mother of the day, pushed her young children– Lottie, Jack, and “Baby Gladys” — into the theatre in hopes of making money. Gladys soon caught the eye of Broadway impresario, David …
Posted in: Biography, Digitized Newspapers, Women's History
Posted by: Arlene Balkansky
While most children read about Helen Keller's childhood triumph over the difficulties of her deaf-blindness, many are unaware of her life as an activist and orator.
Posted in: Biography, Digitized Newspapers, Newspapers, Women's History