Examining the political activism of high school students provides a window to fully understand the rich history and resistance of young people of color from South Central Los Angeles who blazed the trail in many crucial battles during the civil rights era. Researching John C. Fremont High School's history shows that the high school reflects a…

In this paper, the author outlines the results of a research study conducted on one class cohort, focusing on the impacts of teaching Black women's history through Anne Moody's 1968 memoir, "Coming of Age in Mississippi," on their understandings of race and the experiences of Black women. Specifically, Moody's memoir provides a rich…

Margaret Sanger was a crusader for female reproductive rights. Thanks to her tireless efforts, not only are contraceptives now legal, women can also control the size of their families, a basic right denied them until the 1960s. Throughout the better part of the twentieth century Sanger faced public outcry and even arrest in her campaign to make…

Suffrage leader Alice Stone Blackwell wrote in 1914 that "the struggle has never been a fight of woman against man, but always of broad-minded men and women on the one side against narrow-minded men and women on the other." Carrie Chapman Catt agreed, writing that the enemy of suffrage was not men, but resistance to change. How many…

History teachers may well feel challenged with the task of bringing women into their American West curriculums due to the great diversity of women in the West during the nineteenth century. At the same time, the past thirty years or so have produced a plethora of monographs, articles, and primary source collections on women in the American West.…

Research in history education has long suggested that teaching with primary source documents adds significant value to a student's learning experience, resulting in deeper levels of understanding beyond mere fact acquisition. Recent studies have specifically identified the value of using digitized primary sources. One category of primary source…

A few days into the new school year, the author's female students invariably beg, plead, and cajole her in the hopes of watching Disney's "Pocahontas" in class. Toddlers when the film was released in 1995, doubtless they have seen it already dozens of times; more importantly, the author cringes at the ethnic and gender stereotypes sometimes…

In 1915, American Jane Addams, together with 1,300 women from around the world, founded the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, an organization dedicated to fostering understanding, preventing war, and laying the foundations for a permanent peace. Addams believed that women in the United States needed to recognize the…

Though people now take the idea of women in the military for granted, in the 1940s it was a vigorously debated suggestion. Men protected their country; women stayed at home. Because of the conflict over whether women should serve in the army, Congress compromised by creating the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). This article describes the…

The author lives in a place filled with opportunities for girls like her. She is fortunate to attend school and enjoy activities like other young ladies. Her third- and fourth-generation parents encouraged her to attend Japanese Cultural School to learn about her heritage and to be proud of being Japanese-American. Her life has been filled with…

In this article, the author recalls the time she met Gary Nash at UCLA on July 13, 1992, when they began the work of creating the National Standards in History. Professor Nash was the leader in the development of the United States History Standards. In creating the Standards, they were to focus on Historical Thinking. They needed to organize the…

The new directions in American political history have been ably described by the editors of "The Democratic Experiment." These are now freshly out of the gate, but it is clear that they will continue to unfold in the years ahead. The author read the book with distinct pleasure--so much so that she wondered--more than once--whether it was…

The purpose of this annotated bibliography is twofold. The first purpose is to address the question raised by Phyllis Holman Wiesbard, "Where are women on the 'net?" The second purpose is to explore how teachers can use the documents found on the world wide web to teach woman suffrage in their classrooms. Woman suffrage has proved to be a fruitful…

Reviews selected literature about Black women within the framework of Black history in the United States. Includes recent books and articles as well as older classic titles. Uses two approaches: thematic and chronological. (Author/CK)

Describes a university course which synthesizes women's history with traditional history. The four-part curricular sequence comprises the socioeconomic situation; occupations, including housework and how and whether women were employed; values, ideas, and images; and politics, including movements such as suffragism, birth control, and temperance.…