One hundred years ago today -- August 26, 1920 -- Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified that the 19th Amendment had become a part of the U.S. Constitution. It didn't bring the right to vote to most women of color, though.
Tune in on Instagram and Twitter to learn 19 stories you may not know from the Library of Congress, Smithsonian and National Archives. Every weekday from August 3 through Women's Equality Day, August 26, we're counting down from 19 to 1 with a new story each day on our Instagram and Twitter feeds.
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representataives, writes about the long struggle for women's suffrage in an essay from the Library of Congress Magazine.
Fashion has always been an avenue for reference and reinvention, expressing societal viewpoints and political movements through fabric and adornment. As the Library’s collections demonstrate, this was especially true for 20th-century fashion in the U.S. The story of American style is depicted in the Library’s century-old newspapers and magazines; in department store catalogs and home-sewing pattern books; in vintage lithographs and high-gloss photography.
Susan B. Anthony annotated her copy of a Harriet Tubman biography with a brief note about the day the two larger-than-life women met at a social gathering at the dawn of a new century. Anthony was clearly delighted, underlining Tubman's name each time she wrote it.
We chat with Elizabeth Novara, historian of women and gender in the Manuscript Division, about her work. It's part of an ongoing series of librarians, their work and how they came to do it.
This is a guest post by Maria Peña, a public relations strategist in the Library’s Office of Communications. Maya Angelou broke ground as a multifaceted author, poet, actress, recording artist and civil rights activist, while Adelina “Nina” Otero-Warren left an indelible mark in New Mexico’s suffrage movement. This year, both are among five trailblazing women …
Kimberly Hamlin is a history professor at Miami University in Ohio and a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. She researched her latest book, “Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener,” in the Library’s Manuscript Division