 Last month there were a lot of columns wondering if Black History should be confined to a single month. No doubt folks will be wondering if women's history should receive the same treatment. Whatever the right thing to do is, March is Womens History Month and there are a lot of interesting historical features about Michigan women to check out. A great place to start is a search for Women's History at the Michigan eLibrary. Most of the resources are nationwide but there is a link to the Chronology of Michigan Women's History from the Michigan Women's Historical Center. The timeline starts in 1702 with Marie-Therese Guyon Cadillac and Anne Picote de Belestre de Tonti joining their husbands at Fort Pontchartrain (Detroit), becoming the first two European women settlers in Michigan and ends with Debbie Stabenow becoming the first woman from the State of Michigan elected to the United States Senate. What happened with women before and after the timeline seems to be left to imagination (or recent memory). Part of the center is the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame with a huge number of profiles of Michigan women from all walks of life.
Also in Grand Rapids (which seems at first to be an inexplicable hotbed of women's history) is the Greater Grand Rapids Women's History Council. Their website features information about the organization and great online features including profiles of Seven Women Who Made a Difference in Grand Rapids including Madeline La Framboise, a Meti woman (Indian-French) who established a trading post near what is now Ada and Dr. Pearl Kendrick & Dr. Grace Eldering, developers of the whooping cough vaccine. There is also a link to River City ... Furniture City ... Suffragette City? from Grand Rapids Magazine that explains: While Grand Rapids rightly celebrates its heyday as "Furniture City," few GR citizens may realize how that period intersects with suffrage politics. One hundred and six years ago, Susan B. Anthony, Anna Howard Shaw and the entire national movement took over this town for a full week. Even fewer may realize that long before 1899, Emily Burton Ketcham had become a clarion voice calling out from Grand Rapids for the rights of women across the nation.A pair of regional efforts are the Women's History Project of Northwest Michigan and the Benzie Area Women's History Project. Michigan History Magazine put together this PDF primer to Michigan women's history for kids. Also be sure to also check the Michigan Women's Commission 2006 Calendar for a host of statewide events of all kinds. If you have a link or an article you think we should add to this page, please email it to us. PHOTO CREDIT: Arthur S. Siegel, photographer (Library of Congress). Detroit, Michigan. Women civilian defense workers marching in full regalia in the Labor Day parade. |
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