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In the early days of World War II, air raids and other attacks on populated areas in Europe generated fears that similar attacks could happen in the United States. On May 20, 1941, more than six months before the United States entered...
The service of Medal of Honor recipient Dr. Mary Walker, 1864
A graduate of Syracuse Medical College, Mary Walker served as a doctor during the American Civil War and was the only female acting assistant surgeon in the Union Army. In April 1864, Walker was captured by the Confederates in...
An African American soldier’s pay warrant, 1780
During the American Revolution, Sharp Liberty, an African American soldier, served in the Connecticut Line of the Continental Army. Before the war, he had been enslaved in Wallingford, Connecticut. In 1777, he enlisted in the army,...
A British view of rebellious Boston, 1774
In the years leading up to the American Revolution, both the British and the colonists used broadsides to influence public opinion. This broadside, “The Bostonian’s Paying the Excise-man, or Tarring & Feathering,” printed in...
A World War II poster: "Starve the Squander Bug," 1943
Before he became world-renowned as Dr. Seuss for his children’s books and illustrations, Theodor Geisel worked for the US government during World War II designing posters such as this one, encouraging patriotism and investment. The...
The women’s rights movement after the Civil War, 1866
The fight for women’s rights that had begun in earnest with the convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, diminished in the 1850s and 1860s as reformers focused on the abolition of slavery and the Civil War, but the movement did...
Dinner with the nuclear family, 1950
The threat of invasion and subversion in the Cold War era led Americans to seek consensus and conformity, in politics and in culture. The rise of consumer culture in the same period, driven by an economic boom, a population surge, and...
The Map Proves It, ca. 1919
Supporters of women’s rights used maps such as the one shown here to demonstrate where women were allowed to vote, when they won that right, and which elections they could vote in. The source of this map is unknown. Originally printed...
An appeal for suffrage support, 1871
The National Woman Suffrage and Educational Committee was formed in the spring of 1871. The Washington DC-based committee pledged to act as the “centre of all action upon Congress and the country.” The group was also dedicated to the...
Diary of World War I nurse Ella Osborn, 1918–1919
At the outbreak of World War I, Ella Jane Osborn was a surgical nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. In January 1918, she volunteered to serve with the American Expeditionary Forces as a member of the Red Cross’s nursing...
Margaret Corbin
Margaret Corbin Revolutionary War Margaret “Molly” Corbin was the first woman in the United States to earn a military pension, based on her service at the Battle of Fort Washington. Image Source: Herbert Knotel, Twentieth-century sketch representing...
Pauline Cushman
Pauline Cushman Civil War Pauline Cushman served as a spy for the Union Army and is buried at San Francisco National Cemetery. She was an actress who used her skills to gather intelligence for the Union Army. Image Source: Mathew Brady Studio,...
Ella Osborn
Ella Osborn World War I Ella Jane Osborn, a nurse deployed to France during World War I, is buried at Wainscott Cemetery in New York. She kept a remarkable diary in 1918 and 1919 that captured her experiences during the war. Image Source: Ella Jane...
Annie Fox
Annie Fox World War II Annie Fox was Station Hospital’s chief nurse during the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawai'i. On October 26, 1942, Fox became the first woman in America to be awarded the Purple Heart for her heroism during the attack. Image...
Grace Murray Hopper
Grace Murray Hopper Cold War Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper was a naval computer scientist who held the rank of rear admiral when she retired in 1985. Image Source: Lynn Gilbert, Photograph of Grace Murray Hopper in her office in Washington, DC,...
Ashley White-Stumpf
Ashley White-Stumpf Iraq & Afghanistan Ashley White-Stumpf served in the Army during the Afghanistan War. She was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star and the Purple Heart for her service. Image Source: Photograph of the unveiling ceremony for...
Emma Goldman on the restriction of civil liberties, 1919
Emma Goldman was born to a Jewish family in Kovno, Russia (present-day Lithuania). In 1885, at the age of sixteen, she emigrated to the United States, becoming a well-known author and lecturer promoting anarchism, workers’ rights,...
The Right to Vote, Part 3: Women's Suffrage
The Right to Vote: Part 3 Women's Suffrage
What was the path to the Nineteenth Amendment? Scroll through to view the exhibition (above). Recorded readings of select components in the exhibition are available by clicking ...
The struggle for married women’s rights, circa 1880s
In the early nineteenth century, married women in the US were legally subordinate to their husbands. Wives could not own their own property, keep their own wages, or enter into contracts. Beginning in 1839, states slowly began to...
John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, 1961
On January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the thirty-fifth President of the United States. His short, fourteen-minute inaugural address is best remembered for a single line: "My fellow Americans: ask not what your country...
Barack Obama’s First Inaugural Address, 2009
The inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2009 was a historic moment not only because Obama was the first African American ever sworn into executive office but also because he entered the presidency at a...
Phillis Wheatley’s poem on tyranny and slavery, 1772
Born in Africa, Phillis Wheatley was captured and sold into slavery as a child. She was purchased by John Wheatley of Boston in 1761. The Wheatleys soon recognized Phillis’s intelligence and taught her to read and write. She became...
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