Anne Frank
The Diary of Anne Frank is one of the most honest, powerful and poignant accounts of World War II and was written by a German teenage girl. The Franks were a Jewish family living in Germany, then Austria throughout Hitler’s rise to power and during World War II. The family hid in a secret annex with four other people throughout the war but were discovered and sent to concentration camps in 1944. Out of the Frank family, only Anne’s father survived, and he made the decision to publish Anne’s diary. The Diary of Anne Frank has been translated into almost 70 languages and is an intimate portrayal of one of the most inhumane moments in history and is able to educate us on the universal human qualities of emotion, passion, love, hope, desire, fear and strength.
Emma Louise Piper
Emma Louise Piper (1845-1915) was the first African American teacher in Cambridge, MD after the Civil War. Emma was one of 41 New Bedford men and women, both Black and White, who participated in the efforts to educate the newly freed people. In 2012, a portrait of Emma Piper was presented by her New Bedford family members and installed on the walls of the Rock School, one of the oldest Black schools in Maryland, as a tribute to Emma and the many women who traveled south to teach and assist the freedmen to transition to a life of freedom.
Florence Eastman
The only woman to enlist in World War I from Mattapoisett, Florence Eastman (1894-1918) became the Head Army Nurse of the Isolation Hospital at Camp Mills, Mineola, Long Island, with 20 nurses and over 100 orderlies under her supervision. In 1918, Florence died at age 24 of the Spanish Influenza, contracted while devotedly treating infected soldiers. She was the only Mattapoisett volunteer that did not return from military duty during World War I.
Maggie Walker
Maggie Lena Walker devoted her life to civil rights advancement, economic empowerment, and educational opportunities for Jim Crow-era African Americans and women. As a bank president, newspaper editor, and fraternal leader, Walker served as an inspiration of pride and progress. Today, Walker’s home is preserved as a tribute to her enduring legacy of vision, courage, and determination.
Rosellen Gallogly
Considered a living saint in New Bedford, Sister Mary Rosellen Gallogly (1930-2018) was a pioneer in developing services for the homeless, notably as director of Market Ministries Meals and Shelter, known today as Sister Rose House. An early female leader in the faith community, “Sister Rose” was one of three women in the Greater New Bedford Area Clergy and Religious Association, serving alongside Sister Marianna Sylvester and Rev. Pamela Cole.
Wilda "Willie" Mae Turner
This Bakersfield High School grad was one of the top athletes connected to Kern County (although she was born in Tulare County). The famed softball pitcher was inducted into the Bob Elias Hall of Fame in 1975. According to the hall of fame's record, Turner played for the Mears Lumber Company team in Bakersfield at age 11, took part in the World Softball Tournament for the Progressive Optical team at age 14. She joined the J.J. Krieg's World Amateur Alameda team in 1938 at age 16 while still a BHS student, according to the school's archives. She played professionally for the Parichy Bloomer Girls of Chicago, winning 153 games in six years. After throwing a perfect game, she was featured in Life Magazine in 1946 under the headline, "Wilda Mae Turner's Speed and Control Baffle Batters." Finishing her career with an impressive 0.14 earned run average, Turner became the first female manager in Women's Professional Softball League.
(https://www.bakersfield.com/bakersfield-life/womens-history-month-5-women-in-kern-history)
Sunny Scofield
She was the first local female television producer/director who hosted her own TV program, "Sunny Today." The Texas-born trailblazer moved to Kern County in the late 1940s with her then-husband, who sold oil field equipment. Remarried by the mid-1950s, Scofield was active in the community, serving as president of the League of Women Voters during the 1960s, a charter member of the 60 Plus Club at Cal State Bakersfield and president of the Woman's Club who remained an active member for decades after. From her background in radio, Scofield later reached a wider audience with "Sunny Today," which she created to offer viewers an alternative to game shows and soap operas. Although morning programs would become a cornerstone of daytime television, there were no programs like that on the air in the late 1960s. The half-hour program ran weekdays from 1968 to 1975 covering a variety of topics including the Basque culture, how divorce affects families, finances for women and mental health.
(https://www.bakersfield.com/bakersfield-life/womens-history-month-5-women-in-kern-history)
Mary Holman Dodge
The first female police officer with the Bakersfield Police Department, she was also the first woman in California to be promoted to lieutenant. The UC Berkeley grad taught math and art for five years at Tulare High School before taking and passing the civil service test for police in 1941. Officer Holman was promoted to police lieutenant in 1953, working often with juvenile offenders. She published a police textbook, "The Police Officer and the Child," in 1962. In 1963, she married then-Assistant Police Chief Charles H. Dodge Jr., who went on to serve two terms as Kern County sheriff. After 25 years with the department, Dodge retired in 1965 but she remained engaged with the community, speaking to local groups and staying active in the police department's benefit association.
(https://www.bakersfield.com/bakersfield-life/womens-history-month-5-women-in-kern-history)
Dr. Myrnie A. Gifford
Dr. Myrnie A. Gifford
She is acknowledged as the first person to observe a connection between valley fever and the fungus found in the sputum, a mucus-like substance found in the lungs of patients with the disease. Gifford attended Stanford University and UC Berkeley, working at San Francisco Hospital from 1919 to 1921 as an intern and then house director. She served as a physician in the Bay Area from 1921 to 1923 and was also a clinician before moving to Kern County, joining the staff of the Kern County Department of Health in August 1934. At that time, what we now know as valley fever was seen as two diseases: "valley fever," considered benign, and coccidioidal granuloma, which was often fatal. Gifford was able to establish a connection between the two diseases by recognizing the same characteristic rash in patients with both infections. Her work, as well as that of others from Kern County, is still referred to in scholarly discussions of the disease.
(https://www.bakersfield.com/bakersfield-life/womens-history-month-5-women-in-kern-history)
Julia Morgan
Designing more than 700 buildings in California, Julia Morgan is an architect and engineer with a long and prolific career. As the first woman architect to be licensed in California, Morgan paved the way for aspiring female architects everywhere. This famous female from San Francisco graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Civil Engineering. Morgan became the first female student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She’s best known for Hearst Castle in San Simeon—a must-see on the Central Coast. Throughout her career, she also designed many institutions serving women and girls.
(https://www.california.com/californias-most-famous-women-history/)
Bridget "Biddy" Mason
Bridget “Biddy” Mason is, simply put, an American hero. Mason had the cards stacked against her from the start. She was born into slavery, had no formal education, and faced many hurdles in her young life. However, this female historical figure overcame all of that to become a skilled midwife. With the money she saved up from her work, she became one of the first female African American homeowners in Los Angeles. Mason used her wealth to support various charities—she was also a founding member of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church. Today, she is remembered as one of the most influential Black Californians who shaped the state.
(https://www.california.com/californias-most-famous-women-history/)
Books From Our Collection
A Brief History of Feminism by ISBN: 9780262037112Publication Date: 2017-08-25An engaging illustrated history of feminism from antiquity through third-wave feminism, featuring Sappho, Mary Magdalene, Mary Wollstonecraft, Sojourner Truth, Simone de Beauvoir, and many others.The history of feminism? The right to vote, Susan B. Anthony, Gloria Steinem, white pantsuits? Oh, but there's so much more. And we need to know about it, especially now. In pithy text and pithier comics, A Brief History of Feminism engages us, educates us, makes us laugh, and makes us angry. It begins with antiquity and the early days of Judeo-Christianity. (Mary Magdalene questions the maleness of Jesus's inner circle- "People will end up getting the notion you don't want women to be priests." Jesus- "Really, Mary, do you always have to be so negative?") It continues through the Middle Ages, the Early Modern period, and the Enlightenment ("Liberty, equality, fraternity!" "But fraternity means brotherhood!"). It covers the beginnings of an organized women's movement in the nineteenth century, second-wave Feminism, queer feminism, and third-wave Feminism. Along the way, we learn about important figures- Olympe de Gouges, author of the "Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen" (guillotined by Robespierre); Flora Tristan, who linked the oppression of women and the oppression of the proletariat before Marx and Engels set pen to paper; and the poet Audre Lorde, who pointed to the racial obliviousness of mainstream feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. We learn about bourgeois and working-class issues, and the angry racism of some American feminists when black men got the vote before women did. We see God as a long-bearded old man emerging from a cloud (and once, as a woman with her hair in curlers). And we learn the story so far of a history that is still being written.
They Saw the Elephant by ISBN: 0806124733Publication Date: 2014-09-05"The phrase ?seeing the elephant? symbolized for ?49 gold rushers the exotic, the mythical, the once-in-a-lifetime adventure, unequaled anywhere else but in the journey to the promised land of fortune: California. Most western myths . . . generally depict an exclusively male gold rush. Levy?s book debunks that myth. Here a variety of women travel, work, and write their way across the pages of western migrant history."-Choice "One of the best and most comprehensive accounts of gold rush life to date"??San Francisco Chronicle
Women in White Coats by ISBN: 0778311988Publication Date: 2022-03-15NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! For fans of Hidden Figures and Radium Girls comes the remarkable story of three Victorian women who broke down barriers in the medical field to become the first women doctors, revolutionizing the way women receive health care. In the early 1800s, women were dying in large numbers from treatable diseases because they avoided receiving medical care. Examinations performed by male doctors were often demeaning and even painful. In addition, women faced stigma from illness--a diagnosis could greatly limit their ability to find husbands, jobs or be received in polite society. Motivated by personal loss and frustration over inadequate medical care, Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake fought for a woman's place in the male-dominated medical field. For the first time ever, Women in White Coats tells the complete history of these three pioneering women who, despite countless obstacles, earned medical degrees and paved the way for other women to do the same. Though very different in personality and circumstance, together these women built women-run hospitals and teaching colleges--creating for the first time medical care for women by women. With gripping storytelling based on extensive research and access to archival documents, Women in White Coats tells the courageous history these women made by becoming doctors, detailing the boundaries they broke of gender and science to reshape how we receive medical care today.
Stepdaughters of History by ISBN: 0807164577Publication Date: 2016-11-02In Stepdaughters of History, noted scholar Catherine Clinton reflects on the roles of women as historical actors within the field of Civil War studies and examines the ways in which historians have redefined female wartime participation. Clinton contends that despite the recent attention, white and black women?s contributions remain shrouded in myth and sidelined in traditional historical narratives. Her work tackles some of these well-worn assumptions, dismantling prevailing attitudes that consign women to the footnotes of Civil War texts. Clinton highlights some of the debates, led by emerging and established Civil War scholars, which seek to demolish demeaning and limiting stereotypes of southern women as simpering belles, stoic Mammies, Rebel spitfires, or sultry spies. Such caricatures mask the more concrete and compelling struggles within the Confederacy, and in Clinton?s telling, a far more balanced and vivid understanding of women?s roles within the wartime South emerges. New historical evidence has given rise to fresh insights, including important revisionist literature on women?s overt and covert participation in activities designed to challenge the rebellion and on white women?s roles in reshaping the war?s legacy in postwar narratives. Increasingly, Civil War scholarship integrates those women who defied gender conventions to assume men?s roles?including those few who gained notoriety as spies, scouts, or soldiers during the war. As Clinton?s work demonstrates, the larger questions of women?s wartime contributions remain important correctives to our understanding of the war?s impact. Through a fuller appreciation of the dynamics of sex and race, Stepdaughters of History promises a broader conversation in the twenty-first century, inviting readers to continue to confront the conundrums of the American Civil War.
Let's Get Physical by ISBN: 0593188446Publication Date: 2023-01-03A captivating blend of reportage and personal narrative that explores the untold history of women's exercise culture--from jogging and Jazzercise to Jane Fonda--and how women have parlayed physical strength into other forms of power. For much of the twentieth century, sweating was considered "unladylike" and girls grew up believing physical exertion would cause their uterus to "fall out." It was only in the Sixties that, thanks to a few forward-thinking fitness pioneers, women began to move en masse. In Let's Get Physical, journalist Danielle Friedman reveals the fascinating untold history of contemporary fitness culture, chronicling in vivid, cinematic prose how exercise evolved from a beauty tool pitched almost exclusively as a way to "reduce" into one millions have harnessed as a path to mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Let's Get Physical takes us into the workout studios and onto the mats to reclaim these forgotten origin stories--and shine a spotlight on the trailblazers who made it possible for women to move. Each chapter uncovers the birth of an fitness movement that laid the foundation for working out today: the invention of the barre method in the Swinging Sixties, jogging's path to liberation in the Seventies, the explosion of aerobics and weight-training in the Eighties, the rise of yoga in the Nineties, and the ongoing push for a more socially inclusive fitness culture--one that celebrates every body. Ultimately, it tells the story of how women discovered the joy of physical competence and strength--and how, by moving together to transform fitness from a privilege into a right, we can create a more powerful sisterhood.
She Caused a Riot by ISBN: 1492662925Publication Date: 2018-03-06Meet the bold women history has tried to forget...until now! Women's stories are often written as if they spent their entire time on Earth casting woeful but beautiful glances towards the horizon and sighing into the bitter wind at the thought of any conflict. Well, that's not how it f**king happened. When you hear about a woman who was 100% pure and good, you're probably missing the best chapters in her life's story. Maybe she slept around. Maybe she stole. Maybe she crashed planes. Maybe she got shot, or maybe she shot a bad guy (who probably had it coming). Maybe she caused a scandal. Maybe she caused a riot . . . From badass writer Hannah Jewell, She Caused a Riot is an empowering, no-holds-barred look into the epic adventures and dangerous exploits of 100 inspiring women who were too brave, too brilliant, too unconventional, too political, too poor, not ladylike enough and not white enough to be recognized by their shitty contemporaries. Daring and gift-worthy, this is a bold tribute to the powerful women who came before us.
