The, By Ann Gutmann

In First Generations Women in Colonial America, Carol Berkin demonstrates the social, political, and economic circumstances that shaped and influenced the lives of women during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the colonies. In exploring these women’s lives and circumstances it becomes clear that geography, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, and other factors less fixed such as war each influenced a woman’s experience differently and to varying degrees. In doing this, Berkin first showcases the life of a specific woman and then transposes that life onto the general historical framework and provides a context in which this woman would have lived. The lives of these women exemplified is also explored and demonstrated through the use of comparison to highlight their different experiences. Moreover, this analysis also seeks to identify the varied sources of these women’s power, albeit for many this power was limited. The analysis is broken up primarily by geography, then by race, and lastly by time and war. While these factors provide the overarching context of analysis, more specific factors are also introduced.

As the United States was continuing recovering from the Civil War and embracing the expansion of the West, industrialization, immigration and the growth of cities, women’s roles in America were changing by the transformation of this new society. During the period of 1865-1912, women found themselves challenging to break the political structure, power holders, cultural practices and beliefs in their “male” dominated world.

Through Women’s Eyes by Ellen Carol DuBois and Lynn Dumenil addresses American History from 1865 until present day. The third edition of this textbook includes visual and primary sources over several centuries. I used this textbook in a history course, “Women in the United States, 1890 – Present;” I found the textbook to be engaging, helpful, and useful throughout the course. The way in which in the information was presented allowed me to learn, assess, and analyze the difficulties women faced.

¨There was a law against luke. Not him personally everyone like him, kids who were born after their parents already had two babies (pg 6)¨. Would you like a law against you? Among the hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix clearly shows that dictatorship is horrible. In this novel Luke is not allowed to leave the house or be seen. Luke leaves the house in cover and meets a girl the same as him she can't go anywhere so she tries to convince luke to rebel to be like regular people with her but he is to nervous. Luke shows the character traits of brave, jealousy and adventurous as he hides in the shadows.

I learned how Ida B. Wells-Barnett started her life. Born as a slave, orphaned at 16, she became a teacher to support her surviving brothers and sisters. With the difficult circumstances brought upon her, it took an amazing amount of determination for her to fight for black civil rights and women’s rights in the 19th century. In a more civilized age, it’s harder to witness the courage she represented for the disadvantaged.

In her book Southern Horrors Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching, Crystal Feimster aims to show the importance of southern women in the fight for women’s right during and after the civil war. This book tells the story of Ida B. Wells and Rebecca Latimer Felton as well as the hundreds of other southern women who campaigned against rape and lynching and championed for women’s rights. Feimster narrative focuses on both Wells and Felton because they were pioneers of their time in southern women’s empowerment after the war.

Survivance is a term that is used in Native American studies and it includes two important terms: “survival” and “resistance”. Survivance refers to an active sense of presence and in native stories, natural reason, active traditions, customs, narrative resistance, and clearly observable in personal attributes, such as humor, spirit, cast of mind, and moral courage (Vizenor). It allows them to transform their experiences of historical trauma into courage, forgiveness, and healing through political activism and cultural revitalization (sfsu).Vizenor defines this term in opposition to “victimry” and it is more than just survival for the Native Americans, but as self-reliant perseverance through all the hardships that had presented themselves such as the forced assimilation into the “white” community and culture. Instead of losing their roots, the Native Americans were able to hold on to their historical culture and traditions and were so much more than mere survival.

Work, Family and Faith, was edited to provide readers with an accessible introduction to the multiplicity of lives that constructed the supposedly homogenous group of “rural Southern women”. Oral histories of rural southern women blend to reveal narratives about the region and nation that were silent in the historiography. Following in the steps of Tera Hunter, Walker and Sharpless accentuated how vital women were to the construction of Southern history and society. They even touched upon the experiences of rural African American women, often over-looked in the historiography due

Following Reconstruction, the primary goals of the South alongside the rebuilding of their infrastructure, stabilizing and industrializing their economies and divesting from the agrarian focus was the education, training and job placement of the newly freed men. Not the freedmen as a whole but specifically the freed men. There was no effort or attention given to the more than one million women who too were freed, it is in this action where we find the marginalization of the minority within the minority begins. In her memoirs, Sophia B Packard,

The abolition of slavery in the mid nineteenth century changed the lives of African Americans and their role in society shifted from low class workers to individuals who gained opportunities to leave their marks. However, achieving that goal wasn’t easy. African Americans faced obstacles such as poverty, racism and lack of assimilation. From the works of poets like Dunbar and Johnson to writers like Langston Hughes, it is clear that the roles of African Americans have changed from the late nineteenth century to 1940.

Lakota Woman follows the life of Mary Crow Dog, a woman who decides to reconnect with her Lakota heritage in hopes of gaining a stronger sense of identity and purpose. The text explores the ways in which religion play a crucial role in the construction of Mary Crow Dog’s identity. However, as a Lakota

Chapter 4 of A Shining thread of hope explores the the 19th century as it relates to African-American women. It is broken down into subsections: Origins of the movement, Sojourner's sisters, outside the movement, the underground railroad, another world, another culture,and before the dawn. Each time period followed a certain formula. First, a generalization about the time, followed by a

Faith Freeman was born on February 18, 2001, in an impoverished land in Liberia, South Africa. Faith’s biological father, John Duncan, is a Caucasian slave owner and her mother, Mardea Freeman worked under Duncan’s slave system. Freeman existed in a world of racial oppression, domestic violence, civil unrest, and childhood deprivation. Due racial segregation and her status as mixed race, Faith was unable to identify herself as white nor black and felt unconventional in her society. In her early adolescent years, she possessed an adamant and a precocious disposition in the results of the negative environment. She underwent a series of obligatory labor in dumping ground. One day however, she stumbled upon a paper from amongst an ordinary pile

In the book Incidents in The Life of a Slave Girl, the author, Harriet Jacobs takes us into American history of the nineteenth century of unjust slavery and cruelty, with which individuals of both genders had to struggle with. The story is told through a voice of a young African-American woman, a strong and a devoted mother, a faithful Christian soul, and a slave. Her early struggles to survive, to endure years of psychological abuse from her master, and later escape from bondage to freedom. Through this narrative, the author exemplifies the strongest of wills, the enduring and caring love for her two children, and the perseverance to achieve personal freedom.

This paper will share Charlotte Forten’s journal. At sixteen she begins to journal her life events to be left as a part of her legacy. Charlotte Forten’s family was a free black family that lived in Philadelphia during the early 1800’s. Her family worked with abolitionist. Ms. Forten was extremely bright nonetheless she was not accepted to the city’s white public school. She applied and moved to a private school in Salem, Massachusetts. She excelled as the only black student at her school and was quickly promoted. Her journal is significant because it outlines the heart of a free woman whose mission was to help other colored men be acknowledged as having rights and becoming respected.